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Essays for prison reform
The strengths and shortcomings of our prison system
Essays for prison reform
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Mass Incarceration There Are more people in the world locked up here, in the land of the free, in the 1970 we became an era in which has been defined as this term, "Mass Incarceration", The United States now has the highest rates of incarceration in the world, and today we have a prison population of 2.3. There Are more people in the world locked up here, in the land of the free. In the 1970 we became an era in which has been defined as this term, "Mass Incarceration".With the tremendous burst of popularity that the ku Klux klan had a result of the birth of a nation came another wave of terrorism. Meanwhile, they're wasting money on Prisons and Jails because they have so many people. When they can just get rid of the one,s whose crimes aren’t
In the report “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie” attorney Peter Wagner and policy analyst Bernadette Rabuy confirm “[t]he American criminal justice system holds more than 2.3 million people,” a fifth of which for a drug offense, most nonviolent. Why is it that the so called “Land of the Free” has so many of its citizens behind bars?
Alexander (2010) suggests mass incarceration as a system of racialized social control that functions in the same way Jim Crow did. She describes how people that have been incarcer...
Mass Incarceration: The New Jim Crow is the direct consequence of the War on Drugs. That aims to reduce, prevent and eradicate drug use in America through punitive means. The effect of the war on drug policies returned de jure discrimination, denied African Americans justice and undermined the rule of law by altering the criminal justice system in ways that deprive African Americans civil rights and citizenship. In the “New Jim Crow” Alexandra argues that the effects of the drug war policies are not unattended consequences but coordinated by designed to deny African Americans opportunity to gain wealth, be excluded from gaining employment and exercise civil rights through mass incarceration and felony conviction. The war on drugs not only changes the structure of the criminal justice system, it also changes the ways that police officers, prosecutors and judges do their jobs.
We live in a society today filled with crime and fear. We are told not to go out after a certain hour, always move in groups, and even at times advised to carry a weapon on ourselves. There is only one thing that gives us piece of mind in this new and frightening world we live in: the American penal system. We are taught when growing up to believe that all of the bad people in the world are locked up, far out of sight and that we are out of reach of their dangerous grasp. Furthermore, the murderers and rapists we watch on television, we believe once are caught are to be forgotten and never worried about again. We wish on them the most horrible fates and to rot in the caged institution they are forced to call their new home. But, where do we draw the line of cruelty to those who are some of the cruelest people in our country? And what happens when one of this most strict and strongest institution our nation has breaks down? What do we do when this piece of mind, the one thing that lets us sleep at night, suddenly disappears? This is exactly what happened during and in the after effects of the Attica prison riot of 1971. The riot created an incredibly immense shift and change not only in the conditions of prisons, but also in the security we feel as American citizens both in our penal system and American government. The Attica prison riot brought about a much-needed prison reform in terms of safety and conditions for inmates, which was necessary regardless of the social backlash it created and is still felt today.
In conclusion, we realize that the mass incarcerations in the United States exist and it is only a disguised Jim Crow law. It is evident as even the critics of Michelle Alexander’s argument against mass incarceration admit to the Jim Crow Law. Discrimination against black Americans should be rectified and avoided to ensure stability of a country.
The United States of America has the world’s highest incarceration rates, for several reasons. The United States of America doesn’t necessarily possess any unique strict laws in comparison to other countries of the world, yet we still have the highest incarceration rate in the world. More federal level and state level prisons are built in order to control and hold more prisoners because most are reaching its full capacity. The United States of America’s “crime rates” increased about 40 years ago when there became a new focus in the areas of crime. The President of the United States of America at the time Richard Nixon used the term “a war on drugs” in order to shed light on public health due to substance abuse. Initially, these policies created
In recent decades, violent crimes in the United States of America have been on a steady decline, however, the number of people in the United States under some form of correctional control is reaching towering heights and reaching record proportions. In the last thirty years, the incarceration rates in the United States has skyrocketed; the numbers roughly quadrupled from around five hundred thousand to more than 2 million people. (NAACP)In a speech on criminal justice at Columbia University, Hillary Clinton notes that, “It’s a stark fact that the United States has less than five percent of the world’s population, yet we have almost 25 percent of the world’s total prison population. The numbers today are much higher than they were 30, 40
There are too many people incarcerated in the United States of America. The U.S. imprisons 724 people per 100,000. In absolute numbers United States has more of its citizens behind bars then do China or Russia combined. (Gallagher 2008). There are about thousand U.S. citizens that become incarcerated in the prison system in any given week.
Bibliography:.. **Parenti, Christian, Lockdown America (London; New York: Verso, 1999) 17-19. Lynch, Michael J. and Patterson, Britt, Race and Criminal Justice (New York: Harrow and Heinstien, 1991). *Ranese, Celia "Todays Prison system vs. Yesterdays Slave System" USA TALK 13 March 1999. *Palmer, Louise "Numbers of Blacks in Prison Nears 1 Million" The Boston Globe Seattle Post Intelligencer *United States Department of Justice Bureau of Statistics: Prison Inmate Statistics, Washington 1998 *Polowsky, Robert, "Liberal Legacy" Prison Activist Resource Center (weekly).
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.
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.
The most problematic conclusion about Mass Incarceration, whatever the causes or practices, is that currently America has had the highest national prison rates in the world; furthermore, the rates of minorities (particularly African Americans) are extraordinarily disproportionate to the rates of incarcerated Caucasians. Despite the overall rise in incarceration rates since the 1980s, the crime rates have not been reduced as would be expected. Researchers, activists, and politicians alike are now taking a closer look at Mass Incarceration and how it affects society on a larger scale. The purpose of this paper is to examine the anatomy of Mass Incarceration for a better understanding of its importance as a dominant social issue and its ultimate relation to practice of social work. More specifically the populations affected by mass incarceration and the consequences implacable to social justice. The context of historical perspectives on mass incarceration will be analyzed as well as insight to the current social welfare policies on the
Thompson, Heather Anne. Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline, and Transformation in Postwar American History. The Journal of American History (2010) 97 (3): 703-734 doi:10.1093/jahist/97.3.703
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.
...ional Centre for Prison Studies’ Roy Walmsley compiled global prison data which demonstrates the enormity of United States’ prison population compared to other developed countries. The data shows the United States with a prison population of 716 per 100,000 people; larger than China and Russia (Walmsley).