Pros And Cons Of Mass Incarceration

Politicians, reporters, and activists from across the political spectrum have analyzed the ongoing crisis of mass incarceration. Their accounts of our current system sometimes show our current system as an expression of puritanism, as an extension of slavery or Jim Crow, or as a shift but haunting reality of capitalism (Lancaster 2017). “Prison abolitionists are dismissed as utopians and idealists whose ideas are at best unrealistic and impracticable, and, at worst, mystifying and foolish” (Davis 2003). This is a measure of how difficult it is to envision a social order that does not rely on the threat of punishing people in dreadful and harmful places designed to separate them from their communities and families. Prisons are not equipped for

The bankers who peddle the bonds to build the prisons, the private companies that construct the prisons, and the private industries that make money off of servicing the growing numbers of prisoners, are the ones who are benefiting most from our influx of tax dollars into the PIC” (Runstedtler 2011). And, this is even before we take into consideration the ever changing and expanding private prisons or private corporations’ use of prisoners as cheap labor or even called slave labor in many instances (Runstedtler 2011; Davis 2003). “Those benefiting economically from public investment in the PIC have left nothing to chance. They have lobbied for laws that keep people in prison longer (three strikes law, truth in sentencing act), thereby ensuring a steady supply of bodies for beds. They have also welcomed more punitive immigration laws and juvenile sentencing since this has opened up new markets” (Runstedtler 2011). “Prisons have tended to lower the local tax base, depress local wage markets, and reduce the local quality of life for many individuals who are incarcerated and their families” (Runstedtler

“Rather than taking the time to understand the mind and the social environment of individuals who participate in criminal activity and helping to break the ever turning cycles, the criminal justice system is quick to criminalize these individuals, thus failing to realize that, in reality, these acts are just cries for help for necessary resources. There is something from their past that haunts their present and, ultimately, their future” (Johnson-Watkins 2017). And after an individual has cried out and been punished, they are going to constantly struggle because inmates are only punished, not rehabilitated or supported. “Crimes such as domestic violence, drug abuse, and theft are not looked into as actual mental illnesses that could elicit this type of behavior but just as a wrongdoing that must be punished by imprisonment” (Davis 2003). This is a sad future that many individuals in our current criminal justice system are facing. The individual who is incarcerated is suffering but also their family, their community, and