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Mass Incarceration Research

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Mass incarceration is a phenomenon described by Ta Nehisi-Coates as a way to explain the increase in incarcerated people in the United States over the past 40 years. This phenomenon can be traced back most obviously to the early 70s, when Nixon started his presidential term (DRUGPOLICY.ORG). Nixon came into presidency when the rebellious 60s were starting to really pose a threat to the government of the United States. His two main enemies were the major proponents of revolution: liberals against the violence of Vietnam and black people (DRUGPOLICY.ORG). He understood that these groups, but especially the poor black communities, depended on black market drug trade for a lot of their income and therefore found an extremely effective way to quell …show more content…

It is argued that the incarcerated state of blacks is the 4th stage of racial oppression (6E p. 330). If one looks at the War on Drugs from a purely legal based level one can see a disproportionate amount of the policies being made to affect black communities and livelihoods. Statistically the amount of illegal drug users that are black versus white is not much (9.2% black versus 8.1% white) but the amount of arrests in the black community is 34% even though they only have 14% of regular drug users on average (6E p. 333). Even the sentencing laws were in favor of white citizens; in 1986 Congress passed a law that required a 100 to 1 ratio for the trafficking or possession of crack cocaine to that of powder cocaine. This law was disadvantageous for black people because they were much more likely to have crack due to economic and political factors (Elsner p. 20). This meant that having only 5 grams of crack in one 's possession meant a minimum of five years jail time while having 500 grams of powder cocaine equaled the same amount of jail time (WIKIPEDIA). This law along with pre-existing racial prejudice made it that black people are incarcerated at a rate ten times higher than whites (5D). This was observed by a sociologist Katherine Beckett and her research team in …show more content…

The education children receive in predominantly black neighborhoods is often sub-par, with high dropout rates. Subsequently 65% of state inmates have not completed high school. Another major issue is job opportunities; in major cities with a high black population the ability to obtain and keep a decent paying job is difficult and therefore crime is one of the only solutions. More than 50% of inmates earned less than $10,000 a year, were unemployed, or part time (8E p. 17). The close correlation between black Americans and crime is explained as

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In the article, Unwinding Mass Incarceration by Stefan Lobuglio and Anne Piehl, they argue that unwinding the mass incarceration “well neither be cheap nor easy, and to be done responsibly will require a new infrastructure of coordinated community-based facilities and services that can meet evidence-based incarceration needs while also ensuring public safety.” Hence, their argument is clean-cut with evidence in the article to back up their argument of unwinding the mass incarceration. Similarly, a solid fill of a concluding statement upon the unwinding of the mass incarceration as stated in the article, “requires much more than stopping current practices or reversing course by mass commutations and early release programs.” Subsequently, from this article, there are numerous interesting key points, and perspective of unwinding the mass incarceration.

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Mass Incarceration: Transforming an Unconstitutional System. Guild Notes, 40(4), 12. Brad Broussard in his article, Mass

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1343 Words | 6 Pages

Annotated Bibliography Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Alexander opens up on the history of the criminal justice system, disciplinary crime policy and race in the U.S. detailing the ways in which crime policy and mass incarceration have worked together to continue the reduction and defeat of black Americans.

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1041 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout Michelle Alexander's book, we can understand her argument that there is a new yet evolving form of legal discrimination, although there are laws that state that discriminating an individual because of their race is illegal. I find it to be extremely ironic that we have laws that claim discrimination to be illegal, yet other laws only lead to discriminatory acts that the public tends to be blind towards. Michelle explains that there is a current mass incarceration among black men in the United States and the rates of these men continue to increase over time. The use of, possession of, or selling of drugs is illegal, but it has been systematically created that laws make it impossible to do so. She claims that the criminal justice system uses the war on drugs in our country as a way to discriminate and repress the black men who live in our country.

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1578 Words | 7 Pages

Alexander goes on to explain while the majority of the illegal drug users and dealers are white Americans, however, Latino and African Americans are incarcerated at a higher rate than whites (Alexander 98). Alexander accuses the police of using unlawful tactics and practices in poor neighborhoods which are predominantly black and Latin which helps incarcerate these two minority groups at a higher rate. Alexander raised some very interesting points with these two facts listed about, however, she may not be taking all factors into

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167 Words | 1 Pages

Cox (2009) explain the logic in the numbers by asserting that “African Americans are convicted more frequently than Caucasians and other races (making up fifty-nine percent of persons convicted of drug offenses), African Americans are subjected to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines more frequently. "(Cox, 2009, p.23) Wooldredge (2007) correlates social and economic disadvantages as being a driving factor minorities being an easy target for felony convictions. Wooldredge (2007) believes that Sentences are more severe for minority defendants from more social And economically disadvantaged areas within jurisdictions.(Wooldredge, 2007, p.239) Disenfranchisement of felons, especially African-Americans have brought with it a large growing concern

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2029 Words | 9 Pages

Furthermore, despite adjusting for poor self-control this study examined whether beliefs about racial injustices are connected to offending. Finally, while taking into account other correlates of arrests, this study explored the relationship between perceptions of racial injustices and criminal behavior as well as drug and alcohol dependence. First, the results suggest that the majority of black people have a racialized worldview. The findings show that the majority of black people think that their situation mirrors what occurs to black people in general in the United States. Additionally, according to the research, 38% of black people claim to

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1859 Words | 8 Pages

From the year 1970 to 1980, there was almost a 200,000 increase in people who were incarcerated in the United States. During the 1980’s, a new drug became incredibly popular with inner city people, crack cocaine. The crackdown on crack was harsher than on cocaine because cocaine was mainly used in the suburbs where all the middle class white people lived compared the use of crack cocaine which was mainly used by people of color who lived in the inner city. The mandatory sentencing for crack cocaine was much higher than sentencing for powder cocaine. The news had a considerable amount of influence on criminalizing African American men.

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1728 Words | 7 Pages

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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1000 Words | 4 Pages

Like it is mentioned in the movie 13th “The so called war on drugs was a war on communities of color”. So, now black people are being arrested much more than White people even though the drug use is close to the same as Angela F. Chan points out in her article for the Huffington Post. “Even though Black people use drugs at the same rate as White people, they are incarcerated for drug crimes at 20 to 50 times the rate of White people in some states”. A law that was passed during the war on drugs was mandatory sentencing.

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1082 Words | 5 Pages

There are many open wounds in the African-American community that have not healed what so ever. Disintegration of family structures in the African-American community has been a persistent problem for far too long. High out of wedlock birth rates, absent fathers, and the lack of a family support network for many young African-Americans have led to serious problems in America's urban areas. The persistence of serious social problems in inner-city areas has led to a tragic perpetuation of racial prejudice as well. African Americans still face a litany of problems in the 21st century today.

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918 Words | 4 Pages

The result was a mass incarceration of African-Americans with almost zero reduction of the offenses it aimed to deter. By recognizing a ratio of 100:1, the act was viewed as a war on minorities, not drugs. Young, low-income African-American males represented the majority of offenders arrested for crack cocaine, while Caucasians represented the majority of powder cocaine offenders. Due to the rate of incarceration, taxpayers were tired of “footing the bill” for a crime that was disproportionately sentenced (Zimmerman, 2014, Austin-Hillery, 2012).

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77 Words | 1 Pages

Racial inequality is an American tradition. Relative to whites, blacks earn twenty-four percent less, live five fewer years, and are six times more likely to be incarcerated on a given day. Hispanics earn twenty-five percent less than whites and are three times more likely to incarcerated.1 At the end of the 1990s, there were one-third more black men under the jurisdiction of the corrections system than there were enrolled in colleges or universities (Ziedenberg and Schiraldi,

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1261 Words | 6 Pages

With so much money being invested in prisons, the government needed to put people in those prisons to occupy the space and not waste money. States were required to keep these prisons open even if there was no one to occupy them. With desperation to fill empty cells, “mandatory minimums” were introduced. This meant that “long prison sentences could be imposed for minor possession of drugs” such as crack, which was a generally less expensive drug and most commonly “found in the possession of Black people” (Bleiker). These mandatory punishments were directed towards poorer communities since the sentence for possession of crack was “much longer and handed down for smaller amounts than in the case of drugs like cocaine, which was generally more expensive and more often found in the possession of white people” (Bleiker).

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625 Words | 3 Pages

Yet another statistic found on Huffington Post stated “White Americans use drugs more than black Americans, but black people are arrested for drug possession more than three times as often as whites.” These statistics show that inequality between races is still present and

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