Political Activist, Angela Y. Davis in her narrative essay, “Are Prisons Obsolete” remises in the first chapter about how back when she was younger there weren't so many people in jails or prison. Compares to now how jail is so normal that two million of the nine million people on the earth (at that time) were locked away in cages. Davises purpose is that showing that half of those two million are young people of african american, latino, and native american decent should have just as much right to an education as opting out of a sentence by going to the military. Davis begins her argument by stating that larger number of people were incarcerated during the nineteen eighties known as the Reagen era and politicians argued that “tuff on crime” stances including certain imprisonments and longer sentences would keep communities free of crime. Sadly this practice had either little or no effect at all on crime rates in neighborhoods.
She appeals to the older readers who probably don't like my generation of people by saying “Not a single prison opened during the second half of the sixties, nor the entire decade of the 1970’s.” The good times stopped rolling however in the nineteen eighties when nine prisons opened including Northern California Facility for women. She
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However, they still have two prisons in there area one of them is notoriously known as pelican bay. California's new prisons are taking over depressed towns “now shadowed by prisons that the new recession proof, non-polluting industry would be the jumpstart to local redevelopment.” Davis also states that at the same time, this progress helps us to understand why the legislature and California’s voters decided to approve the construction of all these new prisons?. “People wanted to believe that prisons would not only reduce crime, they
Most black Americans are under the control of the criminal justice today whether in parole or probation or whether in jail or prison. Accomplishments of the civil rights association have been challenged by mass incarceration of the African Americans in fighting drugs in the country. Although the Jim Crow laws are not so common, many African Americans are still arrested for very minor crimes. They remain disfranchised and marginalized and trapped by criminal justice that has named them felons and refuted them their rights to be free of lawful employment and discrimination and also education and other public benefits that other citizens enjoy. There is exists discernment in voting rights, employment, education and housing when it comes to privileges. In the, ‘the new Jim crow’ mass incarceration has been described to serve the same function as the post civil war Jim crow laws and pre civil war slavery. (Michelle 16) This essay would defend Michelle Alexander’s argument that mass incarcerations represent the ‘new Jim crow.’
In the argument “Let Prisoners Take College Courses,” by John J. Lennon he argues that when incarcerated, if the college programs are not made readily available for more than the select few inmates, they will see more returns than they would otherwise. To support his thesis Lennon uses a variety of researched facts. For example: “In Sing Sing, for example, one forward-thinking educational program, launched in 1998, has a recidivism rate of less than 2 percent”(Lennon, 1). This shows that Lennon did some research on the subject. In addition to the factual evidence presented in the argument, Lennon uses two different human experiences. One experience was of himself. He spoke of what put him in jail and how being able to take college courses helped him discover who he was and feel remorse for his bad decisions of his past.
Reiman states his thesis in the Introduction. He claims that the goal of the American criminal justice system is not to eliminate crimeor even to achieve justicebut to project to the people an image of the idea that the threat of crime eminates from the poor. The system must "maintain" a large population of poor criminals, and to this end, it must not reduce or eliminate the crimes that poor people commit. When crime declines, it is not because of our criminal justice polices, but in spite of them. In testing this idea, Reiman had his students construct a correctional system that would maintain a stable and visible group of criminals, rather than eliminating or reducing crime, and they suggested the following:
The Life and Activism of Angela Davis. I chose to do this research paper on Angela Davis because of her numerous contributions to the advancement of civil rights as well as to the women’s rights movement. I have passionate beliefs regarding the oppression of women and people of racial minorities. I sought to learn from Davis’ ideology and propose solutions to these conflicts that pervade our society. As well, I hope to gain historical insight into her life and the civil rights movement of the 1960’s and 70’s.
The problem is that regardless of different methods and approaches to prevent prison overcrowding, California still have one, if not, the largest prison population when compared to other states in the nation (ALEC, 2010). Prison overcrowding, defined by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, or CDCR, is when the prison housing capacity is exceeded, creating less spatial room to accommodate inmates (CDCR, 2008). California’s 33 state prisons currently accommodate at least 140,000 inmates. California’s 33 state prisons are so crowded that it has put at serious risks the lives of inmates, prison staffs, and employees. Even with several mental and drug treatment rehabilitation facilities available, California state prisons still have t...
The past two decades have engendered a very serious and historic shift in the utilization of confinement within the United States. In 1980, there were less than five hundred thousand people confined in the nation’s prisons and jails. Today we have approximately two million and the numbers are still elevating. We are spending over thirty five billion annually on corrections while many other regime accommodations for education, health
Prisons have been around for decades. Keeping housed, those of our society who have been convicted
According to statistics since the early 1970’s there has been a 500% increase in the number of people being incarcerated with an average total of 2.2 million people behind bars. The increase in rate of people being incarcerated has also brought about an increasingly disproportionate racial composition. The jails and prisons have a high rate of African Americans incarcerated with an average of 900,000 out of the 2.2 million incarcerateed being African American. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 1 in 6 African American males has been incarcerated at some point in time as of the year 2001.
In the United States, the rate of incarceration has increased shockingly over the past few years. In 2008, it was said that one in 100 U.S. adults were behind bars, meaning more than 2.3 million people. Even more surprising than this high rate is the fact that African Americans have been disproportionately incarcerated, especially low-income and lowly educated blacks. This is racialized mass incarceration. There are a few reasons why racialized mass incarceration occurs and how it negatively affects poor black communities.
For county jails, the problem of cost and recidivism is exacerbated by budgetary constraints and various state mandates. Due to the inability of incarceration to satisfy long-term criminal justice objectives and the very high expenditures associated with the sanction, policy makers at various levels of government have sought to identify appropriate alternatives (Luna-Firebaugh, 2003, p.51-66). I. Alternatives to incarceration give courts more options. For example, it’s ridiculous that the majority of the growth in our prison populations in this country is due to people being slamming in jail just because they were caught using drugs. So much of the crime on the streets of our country is drug-related.
Reiman and Leighton continue to expand on the Pyrrhic Defeat Theory and ways how the criminal justice system continues to succeed by failing to reduce crime. They speak of some reasons why the policies enforced by the criminal justice system, maintain crime rather than reduce it. The system makes use of excuses as to why it fails at the reduction of crimes. While continuing to serve the interests of the powerful and maintaining the view of the poor being the most dangerous to society.
Alexander has written many books, but she is mostly known for her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. In the book, Alexander argues the systematic racial in the United States and how the War on Drugs and other governmental policies is having devastating social consequences. Comparing a prisoner today to a slave, she states, “Today a criminal freed from prison has scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a freed slave…” (pg.141) Criminals also known as “slaves” lose respect from the world the second they have a criminal background. The status of a criminal is often compared to the status of a slave especialy, if he or she is African America. Moreover, she states, “When we say someone was ‘treated like a criminal,’ what we mean to say is that he or she was treated as less than human, like a shameful creature” (pg. 141). Criminals are treated as if they are less than humans. From the moment, they are handcuffed and to the second they are released from jail, criminals are no longer seen as an honest citizen. Their basic rights as a Citizen of the United States are taken and forcing them to survive by any means necessary, which often forces them to return to
Everyday, the American prison system becomes more crowded and over-burdened. Prison bed space cannot keep up with the prison population. While presidents and governors call for a “tough stance” on crime, the infrastructure is inadequate to contain all offenders. However, even if there were enough room to fit every individual that commits a criminal act, would this be the best move for the community and the offender? Placing an individual into a prison removes them from the general population, thus making the society they live in safer. But, separating individuals in a community does indirectly injure the community as a whole. These individuals obviously are no longer contributing to the local economy, but on a basic level, their absence places a hole into a community. Offenders have been shaped by the values and pr...
As the number of convicted felons in prisons increase daily, the government is looking for methods to prevent released prisoners from going back to prison. A controversial plan that has taken the country by storm is a plan wanting to give the prisoners the opportunity to receive a college education while in jail. Among the two Op-Eds, the author John Lennon does a more effective job in convincing the reader to trust him and appealing to the reader’s sympathy while using limited statistics unlike Bill Keller, who although came off as an intelligent man and included many statistics and figures, failed to receive the pity of the reader.
According to the Oxford Index, “whether called mass incarceration, mass imprisonment, the prison boom, or hyper incarceration, this phenomenon refers to the current American experiment in incarceration, which is defined by comparatively and historically extreme rates of imprisonment and by the concentration of imprisonment among young, African American men living in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage.” It should be noted that there is much ambiguity in the scholarly definition of the newly controversial social welfare issue as well as a specific determination in regards to the causes and consequences to American society. While some pro arguments cry act as a crime prevention technique, especially in the scope of the “war on drugs’.