Mass Incarceration

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Consider by the age of 14, approximately 25 percent of African American children have experienced a parent (in most cases a father) being imprisoned for some period of time. Mass incarceration is a term that refers to the unique way the United States has locked up a vast population in federal and state prisons, as well as local jails. The U.S currently locks over 2.2 million human beings in cages; many for non-violent offenses. The system of mass incarceration operates through the structures of gendered and racial discrimination which unfairly target black men. African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites. But, how did we get here? The mass incarceration is no mistake or policy mishap, but a system evolved from America’s greatest sin; Slavery.
Slaver deprives the enslaved person of legal rights and granted the slave owner to have complete power over black men, women, and children, making them have legal property over them. Millions of slaves in America have been humiliated, beaten, traumatized and …show more content…

During the convict leasing, prisoners were contracted under the legal status of laborers and were sold to the highest private bidder. Blacks were arrested and were tackled with court cost and fines and had no means to pay off their debts, so they were sold into forced labor and were understood to be slaves. The 13th amendment has abolish slavery, but it allowed slavery to be appropriate as punishment for a crime. Incarceration grew ten times faster than the general population and prisoners became younger and blacker and the length of their sentences soared. Michelle Alexander argues, “The criminal justice system was strategically employed to force African-Americans back into a system of extreme repression and control, a tactic that would continue to prove successful for generation to

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