“The United States is home to nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners, despite accounting for just 5% of the overall global population” (Wyler). The mass incarceration of US residents is a stain upon our country 's reputation of freedom and liberty. For a supposedly free country with a democratic government it is a great concern that more than one and a half million people are locked up without any rights, only to be released after an extended period of time with a permanent black mark, stripped of all respect or any future potential. The current prison system comes with too great of cost in money for the US and in future opportunities for the inmates. Imprisonment of people requires the necessary funds to support prisons, funds that are …show more content…
Tiana Williams, a student with a thesis in Sociology and African American Studies, brings up factors that seem to be sending many kids into the prison system (Gudrais). She believes that being poor, black, and Hispanic (along with school suspensions) greatly increase your chances of being incarcerated as an adult. She also found that having a low educational attainment and lack of employment opportunities in communities push kids to commit crimes for money (theft-related), seeing as they are not presented with opportunities for their own educational advancement. “The prison walls we built with such industry in the 1980s and ’90s did not keep out the criminal predators,” Bruce Western, a professor of sociology at Harvard Kennedy School, and author of Punishment and Inequality In America, writes, “...but instead divided us internally, leaving our poorest communities with fewer opportunities to join the mainstream and deeply skeptical of the institutions charged with their safety...” Western also suggests that a history in family violence is a key factor in the existence of crime. With parents in jail, children are left either without an influence or chance at childhood, that can lead to a cycle that may direct them to jail time as they …show more content…
According to the NAACP, mandatory minimum sentencing for drug charges should be eliminated. This would substantially decrease the time that prisoners spend in prison for drug related charges. Also, because drug charges make up the majority of non-violent crimes in prison, this would greatly reduce the number of non-violent offenders. According to The Sentencing Project, “Trends in US Correctional Facilities,” 53% of criminals in state prison committed violent crimes and 5.9% of criminals in federal prisons committed violent crimes (Sentencing Project). This shows that almost half of criminals in state prisons and an overwhelming majority of criminals in federal prison did not commit violent crimes. According to the Editorial Division of the New York Times, the government needs to “provide more opportunities for rehabilitation inside prison. Use alternatives to imprisonment for nonviolent offenders, drug addicts and the mentally ill. Release elderly or ill prisoners, who are the least likely to re-offend,” (End Mass Incarceration Now). This article is saying prisoners that have not committed violent crimes should have alternatives to prison time such as drug rehabilitation or other forms of criminal reform. This could keep a large number of people out of
"Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no good law-enforcement reason … Although incarceration has a role to play in our justice system, widespread incarceration at the federal, state and local levels is both ineffective and unsustainable. . . We need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, deter and rehabilitate – not merely to convict, warehouse and forget"(Holder). Former Attorney General Eric Holder does not dispute that prisons play an important role in the justice system. He believes that along with punishing the inmate’s prisons should provide them with rehabilitation. With the already overpopulated prison system across the US there should be alternative for lesser nonviolent offences.
Land of the Unfree: Mass Incarceration and Its Unjust Effects on Those Subjected To It and American Taxpayers
In today’s society mainly anyone growing up in poverty stricken communities, single parent homes, domestic violence or infested and drug infested areas are at risk to being abducted by the school to prison pipeline. The school to prison pipeline is a system designed for at risk teens that do not do well in school. The effect is them being thrown in jail. Economically the black and the Latino community constantly after generation and generation are getting dealt the same hand because each child in the new generation is growing up in a broken home and are falling victim to the same problems that the generation before them have faced. By compiling annual reports on the total number of disciplinary
The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for a number of reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. The ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system is caused by mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism.
Todd Clear and Dina Rise state in their study that the high incarceration and return rates of specific communities negatively impact the community social network like worsening ties amidst neighbors, reducing income of families, and affecting family formation. Moreover, African- Americans are four times more likely than other Americans to live in poverty (DAvis 1) The Class of Poverty, states that” individuals in high poverty, highly black neighborhoods are the least likely to have access to food pantries, child care, transportation, job training, substance abuse treatment or other, similar social services.” This means that the majority of individuals effected by this are African Americans. People living in high poverty communities are offered less help than low poverty areas that are predominantly white, meaning that the intersection and combined oppression of being both a racial minority and of lower class, leads to a higher probability of falling victim to the industrial prison
In the New York Times article, “Safety and Justice Complement Each Other,” by Glenn E. Martin, the author informs, “The Vera Institute for Justice found a 36 percent recidivism rate for individuals who had completed alternative drug programs in New York City, compared with 54 sentenced to prison, jail, probation or time served.” Alternative programs are more likely to inhibit future criminal acts, while incarceration seems to lack long-lasting effects on individuals. In continuance, the author adds that 3 percent of treatment participants were rearrested for violent crimes, while 6 percent of untreated criminals were rearrested for violent crimes. Diversion programs are able to treat one’s motivation for their criminal acts, rather than assuming that illegal habits will go away with time. Instead of sending nonviolent offenders to jail, legislators should consider introducing practical
In todays society the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. This high incarceration rate is due to the growing phenomena known as mass incarceration. This phenomenon has led to massive increase of people being placed in prison and the amount of money being used for these prisons. The book, Race to Incarcerate by Marc Mauer, focuses on mass incarceration as our default social policy because of the weak welfare state in the U.S. In the book Mauer discusses the causes and the problems with this policy.
Harris, H. (2017, March). The Prison Dilemma: Ending America's Incarceration Epidemic. Foreign Affairs, pp. 118-129.
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
To begin, Mandatory minimum sentences result in prison overcrowding, and based on several studies, it does not alleviate crime, for example crimes such as shoplifting or solicitation. These sentencing guidelines do not allow a judge to take into consideration the first time offender, differentiate the deviance level of the offender, and it does not allow for the judge to alter a punishment or judgment to each individual case. When mandatory sentencing came into effect, the drug lords they were trying to stop are not the ones being affected by the sentences. It is the nonviolent, low-level drug users who are overcrowding the prisons as a result of these sentences. Both the U.S. Sentencing Commission and the Department of Justice have determined that mandatory sentencing is not an effective way to deter crime. Studies show that mandatory minimums have gone downhill due to racial a...
More are sentencing options are great because just like every person is different, so is the crime. Prison may not always be the most effective response for people, so If courts have options other than incarceration, “they can better tailor a cost-effective sentence that fits the offender and the crime, protects the public, and provides rehabilitation” (FAMM, 2011). Findings have also proven that alternative saves taxpayers money. “It costs over $28,000 to keep one person in federal prison for one year1 (some states’ prison costs are much higher). Alternatives to incarceration are cheaper, help prevent prison and jail overcrowding, and save taxpayers millions” (FAMM, 2011, para. 3). Lastly, alternatives protect the public by reducing crime. There is a 40% chance that all people leaving prison will go back within three years of their release (FAMM, 2011). “Alternatives to prison such as drug and mental health courts are proven to confront the underlying causes of crime (i.e., drug addiction and mental illness) and help prevent offenders from committing new crimes” (FAMM, 2011, para.
Overcrowding in our state and federal jails today has become a big issue. Back in the 20th century, prison rates in the U.S were fairly low. During the years later due to economic and political factors, that rate began to rise. According to the Bureau of justice statistics, the amount of people in prison went from 139 per 100,000 inmates to 502 per 100,000 inmates from 1980 to 2009. That is nearly 261%. Over 2.1 million Americans are incarcerated and 7.2 million are either incarcerated or under parole. According to these statistics, the U.S has 25% of the world’s prisoners. (Rick Wilson pg.1) Our prison systems simply have too many people. To try and help fix this problem, there needs to be shorter sentences for smaller crimes. Based on the many people in jail at the moment, funding for prison has dropped tremendously.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in the year 1980 we had approximately 501,900 persons incarcerated across the United States. By the year 2000, that figure has jumped to over 2,014,000 prisoners. The current level of incarceration represents the continuation of a 25-year escalation of the nation's prison and jail population beginning in 1973. Currently the U.S. rate of 672 per 100,000 is second only to Russia, and represents a level of incarceration that is 6-10 times that of most industrialized nations. The rise in prison population in recent years is particularly remarkable given that crime rates have been falling nationally since 1992. With less crime, one might assume that fewer people would be sentenced to prison. This trend has been overridden by the increasing impact of lengthy mandatory sentencing policies.
America locks up five times more of its' population than any other nation in the world. Due to prison overcrowding, prisoners are currently sleeping on floors, in tents, in converted broom closets and gymnasiums, or even in double or triple bunks in cells, which were designed for one inmate. Why is this happening? The U.S. Judicial System has become so succumbed to the ideal that Imprisonment is the most visibly form of punishment. The current structure of this system is failing terribly. To take people, strip them of their possessions and privacy, expose them to violence on a daily basis, restrict their quality of life to a 5x7ft cell, and deprive them of any meaning to live. This scenario is a standard form of punishment for violent offenders, although not suitable for nonviolent offenders.
The first issue that I would like to address is the overcrowding issues in prisons. In my opinion, overcrowding issues are the biggest issues in our correctional system that concerns every citizen. Running a prison required money, resources and manpower, with overcrowding issues, the government would have no choice but to increase the number of correctional facilities, privatized prisons and increasing manpower. According to (Levitt, 1996), “The incarceration rate in the United States has more than tripled in the last two decades. At year-end 1994 the United States prison population exceeded one million. Annual government outlays on prisons are roughly $40 billion per year. The rate of imprisonment in the United States is three to four times greater than most European countries.” (p.1). Overcrowding issues are not only affect prisons but the society as a whole as well. The reason is simply because prison population directly refl...