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Last year, I attended a group of seminars in Washington and New York about the corruption of the criminal justice system. I spent the week talking to former inmates who had turned their lives around. This experience has monumentally shaped both my outlook on life and my approach to it. Over the course of the week, I learned about the problem, served to fix it, and made changes in my life to prevent it.
During my studies, I learned that many felons were locked up for nonviolent crimes and that the high rate of recidivism turned minor offenders into lifelong inmates. These seminars were very perceptive to me as I learned that I played a large role in the reentry process. I was offered a plethora of statistics that were staggering to listen to at first, but ultimately fueled discussion. The most enlightening moment of my studies was during a seminar about mandatory minimums. I learned that there was racial bias in the justice system through sentencing for drug possession. Although crack and cocaine are chemically similar, the sentence for crack possession is equivalent to possession of one hundred times more cocaine. This is due to the fact
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Exodus is a reentry program for people who have completed their sentences. The program has biblical roots and correlates to the journey that Moses and the Israelites took on their way out of slavery in Egypt. Exodus offers these people with life assistance in every sector. There are classes on cooking, modern technology, and resume writing. The program is set in place to turn these past inmates into contributing and highly functioning members of society. The day I spent serving in the transitional community was very insightful. I spoke with people who had left the prison system ready to make a change in their lives and it made my heart happy to see that they were equipped with the resources to do
Many changes are made inside the justice system, but very few have damaged the integrity of the system and the futures of citizens and prisoners. Although the story seems to focus more on lockdown, Hopkins clearly identifies the damaging change from rehabilitation in prisons to a strategy of locking up and containing the prisoners. To the writer, and furthermore the reader, the adjustment represented a failure to value lives. “More than 600,000- about 3 times what it was when I entered prison, sixteen years ago. In the resulting expansion of the nation’s prison systems, authorities have tended to dispense with much of the rehabilitative programming once prevalent in America’s penal institutions” (Hopkins 157). The new blueprint to lock every offender in prison for extended sentencing leads to an influx in incarcerated people. With each new person
The majority of our prison population is made up of African Americans of low social and economic classes, who come from low income houses and have low levels of education. The chapter also discusses the amount of money the United States loses yearly due to white collar crime as compared to the cost of violent crime. Another main point was the factors that make it more likely for a poor person to be incarcerated, such as the difficulty they would have in accessing adequate legal counsel and their inability to pay bail. This chapter addresses the inequality of sentencing in regards to race, it supplies us with NCVS data that shows less than one-fourth of assailants are perceived as black even though they are arrested at a much higher rate. In addition to African Americans being more likely to be charged with a crime, they are also more likely to receive harsher punishments for the same crimes- which can be seen in the crack/cocaine disparities. These harsher punishments are also shown in the higher rates of African Americans sentenced to
For a majority of the 20th century, sentencing policies had a minimal effect on social inequality (Western and Pettit 2002). In the early 1970s, this began to change when stricter sentencing policies were enacted (Western and Pettit 2002). Sentencing laws such as determinate sentencing, truth-in-sentencing, mandatory minimum sentencing, and three-strikes laws were enacted with the purpose of achieving greater consistency, certainty, and severity in sentencing (National Research Council 2014). Numerous inequalities involving race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status have generated an unprecedented rate of incarceration in America, especially among minority populations (Western and Pettit 2010). With numerous social inequalities currently
Many Americans pretend that the days of racism are far behind; however it is clear that institutional racism still exists in this country. One way of viewing this institutional racism is looking at our nation’s prison system and how the incarceration rates are skewed towards African American men. The reasons for the incarceration rate disparity are argued and different between races, but history points out and starts to show the reason of why the disparity began. Families and children of the incarcerated are adversely affected due to the discrimination as well as the discrimination against African American students and their likelihood of going to prison compared to the white student. African American women are also affected by the discrimination in the incarceration rate. Many white Americans don’t see how racism affects incarceration rates, and that African Americans are more likely to face discrimination from the police as well as being falsely arrested.
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.
Nationwide, blacks are incarcerated at 8.2 times the rate of whites (Human Rights Watch, 2000).” This difference in proportionality does not necessarily involve direct discrimination; it can be explained by a number of combined factors. Correctional agencies do not control the number of minorities who enter their facilities. Therefore, the disparity must come from decisions made earlier in the criminal justice process. Law enforcement, court pre-sentencing policies and procedures, and sentencing all have a direct effect on the overrepresentation of minorities in the correctional population.
The book titled Beyond Bars: Rejoining Society After Prison offers invaluable lessons of how both men and women may successfully depart prison and return to society. The book was written by Jeffrey Ross and Stephen Richards, both of whom are college professors and criminal justice experts. The population of prisons across the United States has increased dramatically in recent decades despite overall crime rates decreasing during the same time period. Approximately seven million American people are in some form of correctional custody. Between the years1980 and 2000, America’s prison population increased by 500 percent. During the same time period, the number of prisons grew by 300 percent (Ross and Richards, xii). Close to 50 percent of people admitted to confinement have previously served time, exemplifying that the criminal justice system “recycles” inmates through the system again and again (Ross and Richards, xi). Unfortunately, many convicts simply do not remember how to or are ill-equipped to return to society once their sentence ends. Ross and Richards, through their valuable lessons within their book, seek to lessen the problems that ex-prisoners may face when released from prison.
2010, “Racial Disparities in Sentencing: Implications for the Criminal Justice System and the African American Community”, African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies 4(1): 1-31, in this Albonetti’s study is discussed in which it was found that minority status alone accounted for an additional sentence length of “one to seven months.” African American defendants were “likely to receive pretrial release but were more likely to be convicted, and be given harsher sentences after conviction than white defendants charged with the same crimes.” One of the reasons behind this are the sentencing laws, it is seen that these laws are designed in a way that they tend to be harsher towards a certain group of people, generally towards the people of color than others thus leading to inequality with the sentencing
The criminal justice system is full of inequality and disparities among race, gender, and class. From policing neighborhoods, and the ongoing war on drugs, to sentencing, there are underlying biases and discriminatory practices in the criminal justice system that impacts minority communities and groups. Fueled by stereotypes and generalizations, it is important to identify and discuss what crimes take place and who actually makes it up.
Disproportionate Incarceration of African Americans The disproportionate numbers of African Americans in the prison system is a very serious issue, which is not usually discussed in its entirety. However, it is quite important to address the matter because it ultimately will have an effect on African Americans as a whole. Of the many tribulations that plague Americans today, the increase in the number of African American men and women in prisons is unbelievable. It would be nave to say that the increase is due to the fact that more African Americans are committing crimes now than before.
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.
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...
According to statistics since the early 1970’s there has been a 500% increase in the number of people being incarcerated with an average total of 2.2 million people behind bars. The increase in rate of people being incarcerated has also brought about an increasingly disproportionate racial composition. The jails and prisons have a high rate of African Americans incarcerated with an average of 900,000 out of the 2.2 million incarcerateed being African American. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 1 in 6 African American males has been incarcerated at some point in time as of the year 2001.
“Doing projects really gives people self-confidence. Nothing is better than taking the pie out of the oven. What it does for you personally, and for your family 's idea of you, is something you can 't buy." - Martha Stewart. Rehabilitated prisoners programs, for example, in the prisons are one of the most important programs in prison to address the causes of criminality and restore criminal’s self-confidence. Therefore, many governments are still taking advantage of their prisoners while they are in prison. However, some people believe that prison programs ' can improve and develop the criminals to be more professionals in their crimes. In addition, rehabilitated programs help inmates in the character building, ethical behavior, and develop
In today's society, we are facing many changes. Our own family, neighbors, and countrymen are afraid of many dangers which influence their lives. Although many people have fear which resonates in their consciousness and unconsciousness, the United States has a comparatively low crime rate. Despite this low crime rate, America incarcerates it's citizens five times the rate of Canada and seven times that of most European democracies.(Slambrouck, Paul. 24) Our society needs to be changed. We cannot blame the individuals involved in wrongdoing but we can blame our society who raised these criminals. Of course someone who kills another human being needs to be put away in some form; but we need to make changes. We need to help as many maladjusted people as we can. There are some steps which really seem to work. There are many prison inmates who come from broken homes and have low self-esteem. What needs to be done to help these insecure people, who are at war with themselves and society, is to rehabilitate them. The problem is the prison officials do not try to teach the prisoners how to learn from their mistakes.(McGovern, Celeste. 42) What actually happens is that criminals tend to be better thefts, and have the ability to out smart the police. Our politicians need to stress how important vocational, educational, drug-treatment, and religious programs are, in order to improve the attitude and demeanor of these convicted felons. This is the only way to keep ex-con's from jail.(DeLuca, H.R. 38) Another problem with America's prison system is overcrowding. There is a huge amount of young conscienceless offenders who are entering today's prisons. Imagine trying to compact eight gallons of water in a five gallon con...