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Thesis statement for the book understanding mass incarceration
Mass incarceration in america essay
Thesis statement for the book understanding mass incarceration
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Over the last thirty years, the prison population in the United States has increased more than seven-fold to over two million people, including vastly disproportionate numbers of minorities and people with little education. For some racial and educational groups, incarceration has become a depressingly regular experience, and prison culture and influence pervade their communities. Almost 60 percent of black male high school drop-outs in their early thirties have spent time in prison. In Punishment and Inequality in America, sociologist Bruce Western explores the recent era of mass incarceration and the serious social and economic consequences it has wrought.
The criminal justice system may be more corrupt than the people who fill our prisons. It is amazing to see the many ways that certain parts of society actually benefit from the current system we support. This book,The Rich Get Richer and The Poor Get Prison, by authors Jeffrey Reiman and Paul Leighton, has open my eyes to a very corrupt idealism. They are very precise in their supporting examples as well by walking the reader through each step and analogy.
The Jail and The New Jim Crow both describe how our justice system is generally based on people’s conceptions of things, and how our own justice system is creating a new way of discriminating people by labeling, incarcerating the same disreputables and lower class that have come to be labeled as the rabble class. In chapter two, of The New Jim Crow, supporting the claim that our justice system has created a new way of segregating people; Michelle Alexander describes how the process of mass incarceration actually works and how at the end the people that we usually find being arrested, sent to jail, and later on sent to prison, are the same low class persons’ with no knowledge and resources. These people commit petty crimes that cost them their
Prison is a dark, lonely and terrible place. A majority of people incarcerated are people of color. Mass incarceration is mainly concentrated on racial and ethnic minorities. In A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines, it is shown that no matter your background or your story, you will still be targeted because of the color of your skin. Brown assures that The United States has only five percent of the world’s population, but twenty five of the world’s prison population.
Today’s court and justice systems, as well as our prison system, are flawed and don’t do enough to not only hinder any further crime from occurring, but put those who may cause further complications in our society in jail. In the article “Why Prisons Don’t Work,” Wilbert Rideau, a murderer sentenced to life in jail, explains his reasons and provides evidence on why our prison system is counterproductive. According to Rideau, many of those who are thrown in prison, were convicted due to their unskilled, impulsive, and uneducated actions. Putting these men in prison may seem like a good idea, but there are underlying reasons why prisons don’t work.
Abstract: This paper provides an introduction to the social impact of the collateral consequences (the families left behind) of mass incarceration. The reading will include thoughts from sociological perspectives and empirical studies that focus on the consequences incarceration and re-entry have on the striving family left behind. Partners and families of felons suffer from the system in place that punishes, rather than “corrects,” criminal behavior. Collateral Consequences Patience Kabwasa Prof. Laura Howe Soc 231-C21 May 1, 2014 Collateral Consequences
The United States prides itself on being a country of opportunities where the underprivileged can rise up and everyone is treated equally, but is that really the case? In reality the income of an individual gives them advantages of going above the system. The sociological explanation of the influence of the wealthy over the criminal justice system is described in the of the Pyrrhic defeat theory written in Jeffrey Reiman and Paul Leighton book The Rich Get Richer and the Poor get Prison Ideology, class and Criminal Justice. The Pyrrhic defeat theory emphasizes the failure of the criminal justice is the consequence of success for those in power, who are taking advantage of the system.
If found guilty the sentencing phase is addressed. One of the main functions of criminal sanctions is to offer offenders rehabilitation, retribution, deterrence, and incapacitation, there have been discussions that regard the possibility of differential treatment of groups and the overrepresentation of males and Blacks within the criminal justice system (McNamara, & Burns, 2009). It has been suggested in early research that sentencing and the severity of sentencing for minorities showed signs of discrimination, with more recent research the findings are conflicting. Socioeconomics status influences incarceration for those of the minority
Eugene Jarecki States that ,“The prison industrial complex, to put it in it’s crassest term, is a system of industrial mass incarceration. So there’s what you call bureaucratic thrust behind it. It’s hard to shut off because politicians rely upon the steady flow of jobs to their district that the prison system and its related industries promise” (Jareckil 1). Mass incarceration is high rates of imprisonment. Even though when you commit the crime you should do the time.
The social issue I have chosen to focus on is the problem of violent crime and the inequalities and disparities in sentencing. This issue is rooted in systemic racial inequalities, which can result in harsher sentences for individuals from marginalized communities who are convicted of violent crimes such as murder. There is a growing body of research that highlights the need for reform within the criminal justice system to address these disparities and ensure that all individuals are treated fairly and justly. The history of racial disparity in the criminal justice system in the U.S. has been longstanding.
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.
I am interested in mass incarceration due to the fact the USA is a leading county of mass imprisonment. In my opinion, the most important social fact of mass imprisonment is the inequality in penal confinement. This inequality produces tremendous social problem in the USA with extraordinary mass imprisonment rates among racial minorities with no more than a high school education.
As demonstrated in Trends in U.S. corrections, the U.S. has had the highest rates of incarceration as of 2011 adding up to more than seventy hundred thousand(The Sentencing Project 3). Race and class play an important role on who is punished for such crimes as well as who gets
Policies are made and enforced to emphasize the crime committed by the poor; thus instigating fear in society as well as causing racial bias. The criminal justice system is failing because the crime rate is still extremely high while holding one of the highest population of individuals incarcerated in the world. Reiman asserts that prison is costly and most importantly has proven to not deter crime since as there is a high rate of recidivism. Recidivism means that individuals who returns back in jail or prison for recommitting crime. The system is bias in a sense where “for the same crime, members of the lower classes are much more likely than members of the middle and upper classes to be arrested, convicted, and imprisoned – thus providing living proof that crime is a threat from the poor” (Reiman 2006, p.204).
The amount of mass incarceration in the United States as reached an all time high over the years. Mass Incarceration is the incarceration of a person or race based off of them being different and can be identified as a trend among law enforcements. These tensions have reached a certain extent and has received the attention of American citizens and the nation’s government. The laws of the United States seems fair, however with the enforcement of these laws, specific groups are targeted and abused by them daily.
