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Gender Stereotypes In Prisons

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According to data from The Sentencing Project, roughly 2.2 million people are in the United States’ jails and prisons. The United States is currently leading the world in incarceration rates, and this is no accident. There have been many laws, policies and attitudes brought forward that have resulted in this statistic. As a result, there are effects of the current prison system, and hardly any are positive. There is an overrepresentation in many aspects of the prison and jail population that are worth considering. Before understanding why prison has evolved to what it is today, the population of the inmates must be examined. Men of color make up most of the prison population, roughly 66% of it (The Sentencing Project). There are more men …show more content…

People are noticing the similarities in the prison population. America does seem to enjoy putting like groups of people in prison. Are these people innocent? Not always. However, is incarceration the answer to who society deems a menace, absolutely not. The overrepresentation of men and women of color, and people incarcerated for drug offenses are the effect of some changes that were made in the list forty years. Most of the people who are in prison are in prison for a reason, and that reason is because of sentencing policy. It is worth mentioning the jail and prison is sometimes the answer, however it should not be the answer for some low-level offenders. The recent laws and policy are the reasons why the prison and jail population have increased, and why people stay for longer. America has sent more people away to jails and prisons because of attitudes that shape laws and policy. The three strikes law has lots of people in prison for life that do not need to be in prison for life. Mandatory minimums are another reason that people go to prison for a longer periods of time. In the 1980’s, the expected time to serve in prison for a drug charge was an average of 22 months. By 2004, that number has almost increased three times (The Sentencing …show more content…

However, a similar attitude seems to be at the center of the explanation. American’s seem to have a lot of pride concerning their culture, and their country. American’s want perfection for their country, like most people do. However, America has over-criminalized crime, and seems to be obsessed with “cleaning up the streets.” Politician’s do not want to look lenient, and they want to be hard on crime. This has led to absolutely no prison advocacy. Despite politician’s best efforts, crime is here to stay. Funding prisons and jails is necessary, but no one seems to want to. American sends people to prison to forget about them, and to punish them. And rather than updating its attitudes on sentencing, policy makers are trying to come up with laws that are outdated, and unfit for modern

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This is just one manifestation of America’s culture of incarceration. The United States has twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners and only five percent of the world’s population. The prison population in the

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Crime, Law, Administration of Justice Professor: Kelly McGeever 04/25/18 Topic- Reflection on lock-in by John Pfaff Provide your reflection on the book and argument The justice system in America caused mass incarceration to become overpopulated from the 1970s to 2000. The reason being people were sentenced for more minor crimes which resulted in prisons to become overcrowded. Based on the book Lock In by John Pfaff, the three main reasons causing mass incarceration in America were; long sentences, war and drugs, and prosecutors.

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Lourey stated that many prisoners were locked up for committing violent therefore; there are many prisoners in the United States. The racial disparity prison rate high in American social life. More unemployment rate, it is hard to control the policies. More people are in the prisons in the United States. The prisoners are segregated, seen as segregated, seen as racial group.

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In 1995 Bill Clinton escalated the seriousness of drug crimes by establishing the “three strikes, you’re out” policy, The “three strikes, you’re out” policy declared that any person with three violent crime charges would be put on trial for a life sentence, moreover it stated that any drug felony is equivalent to a violent crime. So, with possessing marijuana, crack, or cocaine being reclassified as a felony, these minor drug offenses could turn into a lifetime sentence. From 1983 to 1989 the American prison system increased from 14,301 inmates to nearly 40,000, a 180% increase. For race, by 1989 the arrest rates for whites was 365 for every 100,000 while for blacks the rate was 1,460 per 100,000, thus the incarceration rate for blacks was four times higher

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In the 60’s the population did not sentence people unless the crime was really intolerable for example rape, murder and grand theft, however in the 21st century people are incarcerated for the possession of drug such as marijuana although some states already legalized and it does not matter how much of it was found on the person if it is of large quantity or even in small quantity. I find this ridiculous for the reason being for those who are incarcerated it goes on their record such that if they apply for a job they will have to state that they have been in jail and this usually risks their chances of getting the job which means they will be unemployed and they will do whatever it takes to make ends meet. This usually means they will upgrade up their crime such as armed robbery or even selling cocaine and this brings us full circle of what is wrong with the justice system In the end, we have to think about how the country looks if we have the highest number of prisoners than other nations. This could be seen as a government that spends too much time cracking down on minor offenses instead of focusing on the bigger crimes such as terrorism or even internet crimes.

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Those who find themselves sentenced to time in a penitentiary, jail, or prison are at risk of either being broken or strengthened by the time they spend behind bars. There is a great debate of whether or not the prison system in the United States is positive or negative. The following will briefly highlight the positives, negatives, and possible alternatives for our nation's prison system. First, there is a long list of negatives that the prison system in America brings. The prison system is filled with crime, hate, and negativity almost as much as the free world is.

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My findings focused on the points that mass incarceration substantially affects families and jobs, which then become factors in the issue of recidivism. Moreover, these problems especially target minorities at high rates. To strengthen these points, I could have done more interviews, especially with past convicts or convicts who have returned to jail in order to get more first-hand experiences. As well as interviews with different ages of children exposed to incarceration to see if or how the effects differed. In the future, I hope to expand on the other ways incarceration affects lives, such as through health, especially mental health, or college opportunities.

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The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for several reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. This literature review will discuss the ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system and how mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism has become a problem.

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In addition to greatly affecting the otherwise unlikely citizens of America, Tough on Crime policies have greatly affected minority groups in America; perhaps more so than of any other group of citizens. To begin, from the 1980 on through the year 1995, the incarceration rates among drug offenders increased by more than 1000 percent. Notably, by the year 1995 one out of every four inmates in any given correctional facility was a drug offender. In addition of that 1000 percent increase, drug offenders accounted for more than 80 percent of the total growth in the federal inmate population and 50 percent of the growth of the state prison population from 1985 to 1995 (Stith, web). In addition, once in the system, the probability of receiving harsher

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Something will always need to be fixed in society because society is a reflection of us, and we are not perfect. Recently, there’s been many issues that have caught the attention of people living all across the world. Things such as police brutality, sexual assault in the workplace, and immigration law, just to name a few, but there’s also been an underlying issue that people are becoming more informed about, and that I believe matters - prison reform. Prison reform matters because in many instances, prisoners are treated inhumanely when they are locked up, and aren’t treated as humans when they have served their time. I believe we can bring about change in the prison system by changing the way we punish people who do commit crimes and focusing more on actual rehabilitation.

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A shift is happening in America. The pendulum is swinging from the ideals of get tough and mass incarceration. The swing has both positive and negative affects on the prison system. On the plus side, prison populations are decreasing. By shifting away from incarcerating any who break the law, there are fewer drug dealers and fewer violent offenders in the system.

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People of all different races and ethnicities are locked behind bars because they have been convicted of committing a crime and they are paying for the consequences. When looking at the racial composition of a prison in the United States, it does not mimic the population. This is because some races and ethnicities are over represented in the correctional system in the U.S. (Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 2018). According Walker et al. (2018), African-Americans/Blacks make up less than fifteen percent of the U.S. population, while this race has around thirty-seven percent of the population in the correctional system today.

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Does it make sense to lock up 2.4 million people on any given day, giving the U.S the highest incarceration rate in the world. More people are going to jail, this implies that people are taken to prison everyday for many facilities and many go for no reason. People go to jail and get treated the worst way as possible. This is a reason why the prison system needs to be changed. Inmates need to be treated better.

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isn’t the only thing people believe needs to change; the reasons for arrests have been criticized by many. America incarcerates more citizens for drug related crimes than any other place in the world. Of the roughly 200,000 in federal prison, 52% are being held for drug crimes and only 8% are for violent crimes, such as: murder, assault, and robbery (Waldman, 2013). Many believe that the “War on Drugs” must become less aggressive because of its large contribution to the prison population. The distribution of prisoners by race has also raised concern among Americans.

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