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Essay On Mass Incarceration

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The emergence of public health challenges in the next decade will not be something new and it will not easily fixed. The institutions that are currently in place and have historically contributed to issues of health inequities and will continue to do so unless they are deconstructed and rebuilt with equity in mind. The three most important public health challenges will be the rate of uninsured people and the mistrust that this causes, the medical industrial complex and the effects of trying to deconstruct mass incarceration. The Affordable Care Act raised the rate of insured people in America across gender, age and ethnic lines (Who Gained Health Insurance). The statistics on this topic are staggering, almost every group of Americans gained coverage under the ACA, however with recent plans to repeal the ACA by the new Trump administration it seems that millions of Americans will lose coverage. Health …show more content…

The rate of incarcerated Americans has been increasing and with that the gap of health inequalities has also been increasing. Inmates are disproportionately exposed to illnesses and minorities are disproportionately represented in the inmate population. When discussing mass incarceration and it’s consequences Cloud says, “... these consequences have widened the gap in health outcomes along racial and socioeconomic gradients..”(4). It is clear that mass incarceration is an important health challenge but more important is the approach that the United States takes to solving this. In Sick From Freedom, Downs explains how the United States was not prepared for the emancipation of slaves and in that same respect the United States needs to be cautious in the way it attempts to handle mass incarceration. For example, if there is a mass exodus of non-violent criminals from state prisons these people would be thrusted back into society without being prepared for life on the

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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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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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764 Words | 4 Pages

Davis also notes, the growth of the penal industry within the last three decades in particular, and the last century more generally, is also related to the backlash against emancipatory movements worldwide. In the United States, the end of slavery and the growth of civil rights of African American people were clearly related to the exponential growth of the rate of imprisonment of black people in America. Again,Davis argues just as the end of slavery was once seen as unimaginable, current thinking would have us all believe that it is impossible to imagine the end of

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187 Words | 1 Pages

The Affordable Care Act, (ACA) often referred to as Obamacare, was signed into law March 23rd, 2010 and has quickly become a nightmare to millions of citizens nationwide. While there were fortunate people who benefited from the heavily subsidized and affordable healthcare that was not readily available before ACA was passed, many more people found that their once affordable healthcare was no longer an option due to new ACA requirements (how so?). ACA was designed to extend insurance benefits to roughly 30 million uninsured Americans. The Obama administration aimed to extend Medicaid and provide federal subsidies so lower and middle-class Americans could afford to buy private insurance. This act alone forced millions of Americans out of their

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1191 Words | 5 Pages

Angela Davis in her book, Are Prisons Obsolete?, argues for the overall abolishment of prisons. Amongst the significant claims that support Davis’ argument for abolition, the inadequacy of prison reforms stands out as the most compelling. Reform movements truthfully only seek to slightly improve prison conditions, however, reform protocols are eventually placed unevenly between women and men. Additionally, while some feminist women considered the crusade to implement separate prisons for women and men as progressive, this reform movement proved faulty as female convicts increasingly became sexually assaulted. Following the theme of ineffectiveness, the reform movement that advocated for a female approach to punishment only succeeded in strengthening

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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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643 Words | 3 Pages

Over the decades, mass incarceration has become an important topic that people want to discuss due to the increasing number of mass incarceration. However, most of the people who are incarceration are people of color. This eventually leads to scholars concluding that there is a relationship between mass incarceration and the legacy of slavery. The reason is that people of color are the individuals who are overrepresented in prison compared to whites. If you think about it, slavery is over and African Americans are no longer mistreated; however, that is not the case as African Americans continue to face oppression from the government and police force.

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366 Words | 2 Pages

The Affordable Health Care Act, also known as “Obamacare”, is basically just Obama trying to make sure that the whole nation has insurance and if they do not have it by January 1, 2014, they will be penalized with a fine. To make insurance more affordable, many Americans are able to qualify for a subsidy that lowers the cost depending on age and income. Also, “Obamacare” made it impossible for insurers’ to discriminate, or charge higher rates, for anyone who has pre-existing conditions or for a certain gender. Medicare will also be easier to obtain due to requirement of insurance. This law was passed in the U.S. on March 23, 2010 by Congress and President Barack Obama.

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432 Words | 2 Pages

It is so easy for minorities to take on the stance of a victim, it is equally as easy for them to take on the stance of the aggressor. With everything going on in this Country, and in the World today, it isn't hard to understand the reasoning behind some of the situations that have been going on. Cops are getting away with Murder, Literally, and the war on poverty is seeming to turn into something like a war on the poor people themselves. Mass Incarceration is becoming so frequent that people seem to graze over the realities that are plaguing our very existence.

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712 Words | 3 Pages

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.

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1034 Words | 5 Pages

There are more African Americans in prison now, than there were enslaved in 1850. These individuals are not in prison because they are committing more crimes than their white counterparts, but because of a discriminatory system that targets african americans. Blacks can commit the same crimes as whites, but are more likely to be imprisoned and or receive a steeper sentence. This disproportionate racial sentencing has been a growing issue the United States for four decades, and started with the Reagan Administration's War On Drugs. Private prison organizations lobby for harsher punishments, and profit from the influx of inmates.

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428 Words | 2 Pages

Before the Affordable Care Act was put into work, over 45 million Americans were uninsured. The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was then made to help those who were uninsured. It allowed people with financial struggles with the same opportunity as everyone else to have a healthcare plan. Even though the law was passed in 2010, it took a full year of back and forth to get it passed in the Senate. Obamacare may help you get coverage, but charge you an annual fee if you don’t have one.

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367 Words | 2 Pages

Many Americans were led to believe that the introduction of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2009 would put an end to disparities in health care access. While it did improve the situation for a small percentage of the population there are still many Americans who lack access to good quality health care. Health care access in America is determined by money and those in lower socioeconomic groups frequently tend to miss out on adequate care. In a recent health care report by the national health research foundation Kaiser Family Foundation, it was noted “health care disparities remain a persistent problem in the United States, leading to certain groups being at higher risk of being uninsured, having limited access to care, and experiencing poorer quality of care” (Kaiser Family Foundation). The current health care

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965 Words | 4 Pages

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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874 Words | 4 Pages

Over 2 million people are currently being held in United States prisons, and while the U.S. may only hold 5% of the world’s population, it houses 25% of its prisoners. In the past few years, America’s prison system has fallen under public scrutiny for it’s rising incarceration rate and poor statistics. Many Americans have recently taken notice of the country’s disproportionate prisoner ratio, realized it’s the worst on the planet, and called for the immediate reformation of the failing system. The war on drugs and racial profiling are some of the largest concerns, and many people, some ordinary citizens and others important government figures, are attempting to bring change to one of the country 's lowest aspects.

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