James Kilgore's Understanding Mass Incarceration

812 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Mass incarceration introduction essay

With the recent 2016 election, Hillary Clinton voiced her opinion on putting more money on ankle bracelets for low-level offenders as a solution to help reduce the bloated prison population. This solution, in theory, proposes the offenders to work, be with their loved ones, be able to be productive, and do their time without being in a prison (Shourd). According to James Kilgore, the author of Understanding Mass Incarceration, he agrees that being put in ankle bracelets is better than being put into prisons, but he responds again saying that it’s still not the answer. (qtd. In Shourd). Electronically monitoring has solved some of the problems that the solution set out for, but by solving those problems new ones appeared. By using ankle bracelets …show more content…

People have been trying their best to aid in their efforts by offering their ideas, but because of all the different views the government has nothing ever gets taken in. This shows that there is another way to go about solving this problem without gaining the approval of Congress, and that is making it so that the government is not involved in the process of fixing the problem of overpopulation in the prisons. Thoreau came up with the conclusion that the best government is the one “which governs not at all” (Thoreau). He then follows up saying that government is “at best but an expedient” but states most governments are “inexpedient” (Thoreau). The government has too much power which doesn’t give any left to the people to solve their problems, and it’s not like the legislature is getting anything done. So the only thing left to do is have all the officials back off, and let the people govern themselves. Jeremy Travis, the president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York says “Freedom is the best alternative to incarceration” (Shourd). The rules set in place in the U.S only cause problems, and lead to even the smallest offenses to be punished. Which then leads to incarcerating those offenders, and causing the overpopulation in prisons. If the government wasn’t making so many laws this problem wouldn’t exist in the first

Show More
Related

  • System Of Mass Incarceration In Alexander's The New Jim Crow

    1619 Words  | 4 Pages

    The first chapter in The New Jim Crow called The Rebirth of Caste, Alexander talks about how even though slavery has passed and there are people still out there to keep our society divided. This was called racial hierarchy is a system of belief that some racial groups were either superior or inferior. The superior where considered the most powerful while this left the inferior at the bottom. As slavery left, the superior used the War on Drugs and mass incarcerations as a way to separate and control blacks once again but through the legal system. Alexander then comes into talking about the history before all this has happened. The beginning of slavery to when Jim Crow laws and practices were implemented but then outlawed because of the Civil Rights Movement. Eventually unjust treatment of blacks through the criminal justice system came to be allowed into society such as mass incarceration.

    Read More

  • Mass Incarceration Essay

    1001 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.’

    Read More

  • Gresham Sykes's Five Major Deplusions Of Prisons

    1618 Words  | 4 Pages

    Most prisoners that are in prison now are more than likely to be free one day where some will spend the rest of their living life there. When they enter into the prison system, they lose more than just being able to wear what they want. They even lose more than just their civil liberties. Gresham Sykes was the first to outline these major deprivations that prisoners go through in his book The Society of Captives. His five major pains, which he calls “pains of imprisonment”, were loss of liberty, loss of autonomy, loss of security, deprivation of heterosexual relationships, and deprivation of goods and services. Matthew Robinson adds onto Sykes’ five pains with three more of his own. His additional pains are loss of voting rights, loss of dignity,

    Read More

  • Sexual Incarceration And The Correctional System

    1304 Words  | 3 Pages

    It is easy to turn a blind I when there is no direct personal experience. Mass incarceration is an issue that influences other issues within the correctional system. The more people under correctional supervision means, the more individuals who can potentially be sexually victimized or placed in solitary confinement. Both are issues within the correctional system. Moreover, studies have shown that sexual victimization and solitary confinement have adverse side effects on inmates. If any of these variables are going to change for the better, then policy needs to change. Those in society, especially those with power who can affect policy in the penal system need to see these issues as a major problem. Some of the proposed solutions to reduce the incarceration rate and not new ideas, but a change in approach. Heroux (2011), suggested possible policy solutions to reduce the mass incarceration. Some of these solutions are earlier release, a change in mandatory minimums, transfer to non-institutions facilities, the diversion from institutional facilities, and doing away with mandatory minimum laws. This could be the next step towards reducing mass

    Read More

  • Prison Overcrowding in California

    2479 Words  | 5 Pages

    The proliferation of prison overcrowding has been a rising concern for the U.S. The growing prison population poses considerable health and safety risks to prison staffs and employees, as well as to inmates themselves. The risks will continue to increase if no immediate actions are taken. Whereas fighting proliferation is fundamentally the duty of the U.S. government, prison overcrowding has exposed that the U.S. government will need to take measures to combat the flaws in the prison and criminal justice system. Restructuring the government to combat the danger of prison overcrowding, specifically in California, thus requires reforms that reestablishes the penal codes, increases the state’s budget, and develops opportunities for paroles to prevent their return to prison. The following context will examine and discuss the different approaches to reduce the population of state prisons in California in order to avoid prison overcrowding.

    Read More

  • Race to Incarcerate

    1569 Words  | 4 Pages

    Mass incarceration has caused the prison’s populations to increase dramatically. The reason for this increase in population is because of the sentencing policies that put a lot of men and women in prison for an unjust amount of time. The prison population has be caused by periods of high crime rates, by the medias assembly line approach to the production of news stories that bend the truth of the crimes, and by political figures preying on citizens fear. For example, this fear can be seen in “Richard Nixon’s famous campaign call for “law and order” spoke to those fears, hostilities, and racist underpinnings” (Mauer pg. 52). This causes law enforcement to focus on crimes that involve violent crimes/offenders. Such as, gang members, drive by shootings, drug dealers, and serial killers. Instead of our law agencies focusing their attention on the fundamental causes of crime. Such as, why these crimes are committed, the family, and preventive services. These agencies choose to fight crime by establishing a “War On Drugs” and with “Get Tough” sentencing policies. These policies include “three strikes laws, mandatory minimum sentences, and juvenile waives laws which allows kids to be trialed as adults.

    Read More

  • Effects Of Overpopulation In Prisons

    1719 Words  | 4 Pages

    The overpopulation in the prison system in America has been an on going problem in the United States for the past two decades. Not only does it effect the American people who are also the tax payers to fund all of the convicts in prisons and jails, but it also effects the prisoners themselves. Family members of the prisoners also come into effect. Overpopulation in prison cause a horrible chain reaction that causes nothing but suffering and problems for a whole bunch people. Yet through all the problems that lye with the overpopulation in prisons, there are some solutions to fix this ongoing huge problem in America.

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay On Prison Reform

    1286 Words  | 3 Pages

    Over the past several decades, the number of prison inmates has grown exponentially. In 1980, prison population had numbers around half a million inmates. A graph of statistics gathered from the U.S. Bureau of Justice shows that between 1980 and 2010, the prison population grew almost five times, topping out at nearly 2.5 million. According to an article in The New York Times, the average time spent in jail by prisoners released in 2009 increased by 36% compared to prisoners released in 1990. Many people, such as those at Human Rights Watch, believe that the increase of these numbers has been because of tough-on-crime laws, causing prisons to be filled with non-violent offenders. This rise in crime rates, prison population, and recidivism, has led politicians as well as ordinary citizens to call for prison reform.

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay On Mass Incarceration

    1168 Words  | 3 Pages

    Today, half of state prisoners are serving time for nonviolent crimes. Over half of federal prisoners are serving time for drug crimes. Mass incarceration seems to be extremely expensive and a waste of money. It is believed to be a massive failure. Increased punishments and jailing have been declining in effectiveness for more than thirty years. Violent crime rates fell by more than fifty percent between 1991 and 2013, while property crime declined by forty-six percent, according to FBI statistics. Yet between 1990 and 2009, the prison population in the U.S. more than doubled, jumping from 771,243 to over 1.6 million (Nadia Prupis, 2015). While jailing may have at first had a positive result on the crime rate, it has reached a point of being less and less worth all the effort. Income growth and an aging population each had a greater effect on the decline in national crime rates than jailing. Mass incarceration and tough-on-crime policies have had huge social and money-related consequences--from its eighty billion dollars per-year price tag to its many societal costs, including an increased risk of recidivism due to barbarous conditions in prison and a lack of after-release reintegration opportunities. The government needs to rethink their strategy and their policies that are bad

    Read More

  • Mass Incarceration Essay

    754 Words  | 2 Pages

    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’.

    Read More

  • Prison Reform In America

    1883 Words  | 4 Pages

    Maybe if I saw more reports on how prison has improved our society and the criminals who live among us, I would see why we should work on reforming our prisons. Until then, it does not seem to be working. We trust in the government to provide for our safety, but we must take responsibility among ourselves. To understand that the current system does work and that its intent is not to provide a safe society. History has shown us that. What we have done or continue to do will not make this a safer place to live. The problem is not to reform our prison system, for this won't stop criminals to commit crimes, but to find ways and means to deteriorate them from doing the crime.

    Read More

  • Problems with the American Prison System

    1089 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Nonviolent Offenders

    1487 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • America’s Prisons and Their Effects On Society

    1532 Words  | 4 Pages

    Trachtenberg, B. (2009, February). Incarceration policy strikes out: Exploding prison population compromises the U.S. justice system. ABA Journal, 66.

    Read More

  • Issues in Corrections

    851 Words  | 2 Pages

    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...

    Read More

More about James Kilgore's Understanding Mass Incarceration

Open Document