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Profiling In Prisons

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America makes up a total of five percent of the world’s population, but our incarcerated population makes up twenty-five percent of the world’s incarcerated population. I learned this statistic one day prior to our lecture on drugs in my pre-law class while discussing criminal law. The War on Drugs agenda pushed by President Nixon has created barriers for people who are incarcerated because of mandatory minimums in prisons and then the difficulty of rebuilding your life once out. This means that because of a minor drug offense someone can be in prison for a lengthy time leading to overcrowding in prisons and more money for outsourced prison companies who make a profit off of prison labor and the system itself. Before this lecture, I had the very simple view of “Do not commit crimes and you will not get arrested.” However, many are pushed into a life of crime because of inability to provide for their families with the low wages of part time job opportunities. The Illegitimate Opportunity Structure shows how many people are pushed into a life of criminality and must choose to conform, innovate, ritualize, retreat, or rebel. Police profiling was another that was astonishing in this lecture because I had always heard of it in the news but never looked at the statistics about racial profiling.
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