...prison system in America has been a constant issue of mass-incarceration, a lack of rehabilitation, and a rate of reentry that far exceeds that of any other nation, yet this problem’s escalation has done little to bring it to the platform of reformation. The prison system has cost American taxpayers billions of dollars, and a majority of these citizens are completely unaware of the needlessness of the costs with which they are burdened. With 2.2 million people incarcerated in the U.S., Americans cannot afford to continue to turn a blind eye to the economic issues presented by the current prison system (Council of Economic Advisors 3). Due to prison growth, an increasing incarceration rate, and a lack of rehabilitation and...
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...America makes up five percent of the world’s population but 25% percent of the prison’s population. This is cause mandatory minimum sentencings, which means a person convicted of a crime must be imprisoned for a least amount of time, as opposed to leaving the length of punishment up to judges. This sentencing is mostly used for drug offense but if the offense is non violent the time in prison is usually a decade. Mandatory minimum contributes to the fact that America has a systematic problem of increase of mass incarceration, and that men of color are being deprived of things because of criminal records . Even though some believe that it prevents drug use. Overall nonviolent drug offense should be prosecuted but mandatory minimum sentencing should be eradicated. Mass incarceration refers to the unique way the United States had locked up a tremendous population in federal, state prisons, and local jails. In the text “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness” by Dr. J. Carl Gregg , it states “ In 1972, fewer than 350,000 people were being held in jails and prisons nationwide, compared with more than 2 million...
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...The United States of America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. America holds 5% of the world’s population, yet it houses 25% of the world’s prisoners (Walmsley 2013). The approximate amount of spending on our nations prisoners is 74 billion dollars, annually (Silver 2014). With the cost of rising incarceration in the U.S. and climbing recidivism rates, it is more apparent than ever that the American Prison Industrial Complex (“PIC”) is in great need of reform (Wagner 2014). The PIC enforces a recidivism cycle in which more than 50% of prisoners return to prison less than 3 years after release, thus being referred to by the PEW Research Center as “The Revolving Door of America’s Prisons” (2011). Not only is this cycle inflicting...
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...Nick Smith Mrs. Relyea Ethics 16 October 2016 Mass Incarceration In the U.S. Incarceration in America is a seriously flawed system. Now, crime is bad; bad things happen to good people, and that’s terrible, something should be done about it. This is not always done properly in the U.S. These wars on crime, wars on drugs, they are wars on people; the smart political move is to appear tough on crime because crime is scary, so we increased minimum sentences, we arrested more people, we sent more of them to prison. That's how we looked tough on crime, but the results are in: it's bad policy. It's cruel, it's shortsighted, and to continue this policy of mass incarceration would be foolish. The dehumanization of prisoners and the turn to for-profit prisons has created economic problems in our country and has created massive rifts in today’s society....
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...basically read and learn more about the high crime rate in America, and what excuses we make for these high crime rates. We can see that the crime rates have fluctuated over time since the 1900’s, but even at some of the times of the lowest crime rates in America, it was still higher that even the higher crime rates in most other Western industrial societies. When making comparisons with the US and European countries, we learn that there is a much higher rate of lethal violence, such as suicide in the US. Even though the rates of violent crime in America has declined over recent years, author’s believe that this has more to do with changes in America’s economic status rather than law’s and government policies. Some of the changes in the crime rates could have to do with the “imprisonment binge”, but the number of incarcerated criminals does not reduce the number of criminals we have in America, it just reduces the number of criminals we have roaming free in America. We know that crime is not completely avoidable, and the government has been making changes to help reduce the risks and the likeliness of lethal and dangerous crimes happening. Some of the precautions that have been made include: effective gun control, decriminalization if illicit drugs, amelioration of poverty, the prevention of child abuse or neglect, and they also are taking precautions for at-risk adolescents. In America, there are many “excuses” for the high crime rates that we have. Some of the excuses that we see...
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...Introduction Incarceration is a kind of punishment in which criminals are held in prison, because they have committed a crime. People are usually incarcerated because they are involved in illegal activities various jurisdictions in different nations have devise different laws and regulations to govern the function of incarceration (Mauer, 1999) III. Body of the paper A. Prevalence 1. Statistics regarding incarceration 2. Statistics regarding race (Kennedy, 1997) 3. Racial disparity in prison sentence 4. Racial disparity in duration of sentence (Kennedy, 1997) This explains and illustrates the various incidents and statistics of African American, Hispanic and the white people. This elaborates that ethical discrimination occurs is the entire criminal justice process. The minorities and ethnic groups are given more harsh punishments as compared to white. B. Causes 1. Reasons behind African American in jail 2. Disparities in ways African American communities are policed (Huffing Post). 3. In adequate allocation of resources 4. Racial profiling (Wall Street Journal). This section describes the various reasons and causes due to which most of the African Americans have to go to jails once in their life time. It will also show how lack of resources contributes to the problem. C. Consequences 1. The impact on individual families( www.urbanportal.com) 2. The effects on the social economic system (NPR) 3. Higher rate of infectious...
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...Driving through country roads, you get a glimpse of people who seem to be living the American dream, but do you ever wonder what is beyond the white picket fences? What kind of struggles do they face? Later, you find out that, inside the house you once dreamed about, the mother is an alcoholic and the children are drug dealers. It destroys the romance you had envisioned. In recent years, drug use has spiked in America, specifically Appalachia. The effects are detrimental to their society. The increase in drug abuse in Appalachia results in the rise of home instability, incarceration rates, and death rates. Home instability plays a sizable role in the cycle of drug problems in Appalachia. J.D. Vance in Hillbilly Elegy attests to this statement...
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...Why is the Incarceration Rate in the US so high? The United States has about 300 million residents, about 5 percent of the total world’s population, but the prisons in the United States account for 25 percent of the world’s inmates. This statistic gives the United States the highest incarceration rate in the world with 743 of every 100,000 people behind bars (Levin 2013). On the other hand, Canada, our northern neighbor only has 113 per 100,000 of its citizens in prison (Levin 2013). So the question is, what really is behind the high incarceration rate in the United States? The difference is substantial and cannot be ignored; the incarceration rate in the U.S. is nearly 6.5 times larger. This is a staggering statistic and begins to raise some valid concerns, could it be that the United States court system is structured in a way that unfairly treats criminals? Or could it be that people in the United States just commit more crimes per capita than the rest of the world? The latter doesn’t seem like a plausible explanation, the United States and Canada are so similar it almost seems unrealistic to assume that the crime disparity could be so wide. That leaves us with the idea that the United States court systems unfairly treats criminals or just treats criminals harsher than any other developed country in the world. This thought is certainly very frightening and should be a concern for every United States citizen. Even though most people are good, law-abiding citizens, sometimes...
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...African-American Males, Incarceration and Structural African-American Males, Incarceration and Structural Inequality Incarceration in the United States is one of the main forms of punishment or as many would like to state forms of rehabilitation. With that being the case, the United States, while being considered one of the most powerful and influential countries in the world boasts the highest “rehabilitation” rate in the world. The staggering part remains that not only do we have the highest prison population but our incarceration rate continues to grow as our creativity or desire to solve this problem continues to stagnate. One of the major issues when researching incarceration rates is the obvious elevated rate of young African-American males that are sentenced. While the percentage of African-American incarcerated males is extremely high the length of their sentences are shockingly elevated compared to the majority of population in the United States. “One in every nine African-American males aged 25-29 were in prison or jail in 2009, compared to one in twenty-seven Latino males and one in sixty white males in the same age group, according to the Sentencing Project”. ("State of Young America," 2009, para. 11) The question currently being dealt with in the United States is how do we accommodate all of these prisoners? Our countries answer has been quite simple, to build more prisons or as some would sugarcoat it, “rehabilitation facilities”. The correct question...
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...the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. (That number excludes hundreds of thousands of people held in administrative detention, most of them in China’s extrajudicial system of re-education through labor, which often singles out political activists who have not committed crimes.) San Marino, with a population of about 30,000, is at the end of the long list of 218 countries compiled by the center. It has a single prisoner. The United States comes in first, too, on a more meaningful list from the prison studies center, the one ranked in order of the incarceration rates. It has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. (If you count only adults, one in 100 Americans is locked up.) The only other major industrialized nation that even comes close is Russia, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The others have much lower rates. England’s rate is 151; Germany’s is...
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...In the book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander—a Ohio State University professor, director of Racial Justice Project at ACLU of Northern California, and director of the Civil Rights Clinics at Stanford Law School—was the uncovering research about the system of mass incarceration, which are rules, policies, and laws that helped control the amount of criminals entering and leaving prisons. The author begins with slavery and continues to explain the Jim Crow segregation, which both represent mass incarcerations. Mass incarceration prevents discrimination towards groups of people. For example, the author states, “After the death of slavery, the idea of race lives on.” (26) This specific example...
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...Or should we call them black collar crime. Because, we even do not hear about them. The other chocking point is the incarceration rates- there the black peoples own a winner place. Du to the decline of crime in general, I was surprise to know that finally this decries the race incarceration rates, and that the jails and prisonned black population was in naturally was go ups But what I find incredible, that is a reports containing the statistical datas. What is wrong with that. On one hand: Messner and Rosenfels confirms that « Black are overrepresented among both the victims and offenders in incidents of criminal violence. For example, blacks constitute about 13%of th US population but accounted for 50.3% of the 12.844 homicide victims in 2010 with known race. The homicide victimization rate among black is more then 6 that among white Americans. (…) Homicides contributed to about 50% of all the death in 2007 among black males 20 to 24 years old. The proportion of deaths from homicide among white men of the same age was 5%....
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...The topic on my research is psychological impact of incarceration. I will be discussing the how incarceration psychological effects the prisoner and their family. This is an important topic to discuss because America is known for having the highest incarceration rate in the world. And even though America has the highest incarceration rate, crime still has not been eliminated or been deterred. In fact, the recidivism rates are high within the U.S so what psychological impact does incarceration have on prisoners and their families? The article, Children of incarcerated mothers, gives great information on the psychological effects of children that mothers are in prison. Children whose mothers are in prison are among the riskiest of the high...
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...The United States is facing a major incarceration crisis. With less than 5 percent of the world’s population, our country incarcerates a quarter of world prisoners, and African Americans represent the highest rate, by far, of those imprisoned. Today, African Americans are incarcerated at a rate that is nearly 6 times that of whites. These numbers are staggering, considering African Americans only represent 12 to 13 percent of the U.S. population; yes, racial disparities in incarceration are very real in America. People of color have been facing disadvantages, disparities and discrimination for too many centuries – still today, 50 years after Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report on “The Negro Family.” Since the end of slavery, the U.S. has been criminalizing social problems in a way no other country has, leading the criminal justice system to ensnare the most disadvantaged of us all....
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...believe that full equality been achieved would do well to notice many African Americans' reality today. An extraordinary amount of blacks are still barred from voting because in nearly every state, as convicted felons cannot vote. Hundreds of thousands of African Americans have served time in prison as a result of drug convictions and are branded felons for life. Voting is also barred for those currently incarcerated. Alexander uncovers the system of mass incarceration: a system comprised of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control criminals both in and out of prison. The greatest instigator of mass incarceration is the War on Drugs. Rather than combat drug activity, the War on Drugs has served as a deliberate strategy to control people of color and remove them from the political process, which is racist in both application and design. Alexander suggests that the War on Drugs and mass incarceration constitute a "rebirth of caste" in America. Beginning with slavery and continuing with Jim Crow segregation, mass incarceration places entire groups of people into discriminatory positions in society, permanently. The War on Drugs began in earnest in the mid-1980s, training local law enforcement agencies with the means to increase crackdowns on communities in search of drugs. Alexander notices, however, that many of the policies implemented by the War on Drugs usurps the U.S. Constitution and are specifically targeted at communities of color. The "stop-and-frisk" rule, for example...
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