Summary Of Why Are So Many American Criminals By Evan Feinberg

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I found an opinion article from CNN written in 2015 by Evan Feinberg. His article is titled, “Why are so many Americans criminals?” In the article, he explains how America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, creating a huge problem for its citizens.

Feinberg cited a statistic that incarceration leads to an 11% drop in wages, 9 weeks lost of employments each year, and a 40% annual reduction in wages (Pew). The statistics were created by Pew Charitable Trusts, an organization dedicated to “improving public policy, informing the public, and invigorating civic life” (Pew).

This statistic appears in the middle of his opinion piece. He frames this statistic by first providing context for it. Feinberg cites that America has the highest incarceration of any country around the world. While the US contains 5% of the world’s total population, it contains 25% of its prison population. He also goes on to talk about how our criminal justice system is racially biased: 40% of the people in our prisons are African American while as a group they only represent 13% of the US’s total population (Feinberg). …show more content…

It is with this initial background that he goes on to cite the poverty statistics form Pew Charitable