Mass incarceration has been around for over 200 years and still growing rapidly. Too many people are being put in jail and many prison systems can't keep up with the demand of people coming in. Many prison systems are dangerous where many people end up dead. The United States should not have mass incarceration because of the terrible living conditions, the harm to the economy and are discriminative against minority races.
The first reason the United States should not have mass incarceration is because of the living conditions of prisons that harm the inmates inside. The Equal Justice Initiative is a private organization that helps minorities that are incarcerated and helps them get out. In the article, they mention that people that are incarcerated
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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit organization founded in 1920. They are here to help defend and preserve the individual rights that are supposed to be guaranteed to every person in the United States. The ACLU wrote about how the United States spends over $80 billion on incarceration each year; where that money could go towards investing in better facilities and helping the surrounding community build. They also mentioned that twice as many people are incarcerated in local jails awaiting trial and presumed innocent as in the entire federal prison system, adding onto that, each year, 650,000 people nationwide return from prison to their communities. When they are returned to their communities, they face nearly 50,000 federal, state, and local legal restrictions that make it difficult for them to get back into society (Source C). Another example of how the prison system harms the economy is that ever since 1950, the number of people in the prison system has increased exponentially over the last 40 years. There are around 1.46 million people in the United States prison system and 39% of them were in prison for no public safety reason and could have been punished in a less costly and damaging way (such as community service) (Source B). Having low-risk offenders do community service helps the environment and gives the offender a less harsh …show more content…
The Documentary 13th by Ava DuVernay examined the United States prison system, which looks at how the country's history of racial inequality drives the high rate of incarceration in America. This documentary shows the relationship between African American men and the prison system and how it is corrupt. The documentary gives an example of one instance when an African American boy was discriminated against. Kalief Browder was a teen African American boy who was held at the Rikers Island jail complex, without trial, between 2010 and 2013 for allegedly stealing a backpack containing valuables. He was in solitary confinement for over 700 days. He killed himself while still in confinement (source A). Kalief Browder was just one instant out of hundreds. The police system is supposed to be non-biased towards race, gender, etc… but there is so much evidence that shows the system is corrupt and is biased towards minority races like African Americans. As I mentioned above with the living conditions, many inmates are put in solitary confinement, which eventually leads them to suicide like in Kalief Browder's case since they feel helpless or they end up developing a mental illness that isn't treated within prison
The Kalief Browder Story connection between the prison system/police, and slavery show Kalief being looked at as a slave at the Riker’s Island jail. While in prison he was struck constantly, went days without a meal, and treated like he was nothing. All the prison guards acted like they owned him. Whatever they told him to do he had to do it or there would be consequences. The same way the prison guards treated Kalief represents how the police and prison system now treats African American men.
Kalief Browder is an African American male born in the Bronx, that went to prison for a crime for the robbery of a book bag, a crime he did not commit. He ended up spending 3 years in prison. Two of the years were in solitary
Kalief Browder was only 16 when he was sent to Rikers Island, one of the cruelest juvenile prisons in the nation, for being accused of stealing a backpack but with no evidence to support. He spent around two years in solitary confinement which drove him to attempt suicide many times. He was abused every day by inmates and prison guards for no reason at all. In his three years he was waiting for a trial which should not have taken longer than six months to complete. His mother spoke out to the public, waiting for his justice to be repaid every day and for her sons return.
The documentary 13th was released on October 7, 2016 and it triggered a worldwide shock. As a documentary, it was adept enough to address several ongoing issues, especially regarding the maltreatment of African Americans, but the documentary was shaped around the theme that African Americans were never free, and continue to fight for that freedom. The content within the documentary varied from earlier times where slavery, segregation and, Jim Crow laws existed to the more implicit manner of racism that is presented through the massive imprisonment of African Americans, and unjustified use of the criminal justice system against them. The documentary revolves around three main themes: the overrepresentation of African Americans in the media,
This book discusses social issues such as Mass Incarceration within our society. Michelle Alexander is very qualified to discuss the controversial topics that are mentioned within the text. Alexander is a civil rights lawyer, a legal scholar and advocate. She has held many positions in higher
Similarly, Kalief Browder lost a portion of his life in jail due to wrongful conviction. As mentioned in “Before The Law” an article published in The New Yorker, Browder was a 16 year old boy walking down the streets of the Bronx with a friend when he was approached by police officers, “An officer said that a man had just reported that they had robbed him.” Both Browder and his friend were taken down to the precinct and then to booking where his friend was let go, but he wasn’t. Since Browder had been on probation at the time the judge held him with a bail set at three thousand dollars, being charged with robbery, grand larceny, and assault. Seeing that the bail was was too expensive for his family to pay, Browder was sent to Rikers Island where he would spend 3 years awaiting a trial for a crime he didn’t commit.
Prison is a dark, lonely and terrible place. A majority of people incarcerated are people of color. Mass incarceration is mainly concentrated on racial and ethnic minorities. In A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines, it is shown that no matter your background or your story, you will still be targeted because of the color of your skin. Brown assures that The United States has only five percent of the world’s population, but twenty five of the world’s prison population.
Why the prison system is flawed The american prison system is flawed and should be changed because it is very expensive to keep it running the way it is, the prison system is helping gangs grow and it can be fixed it is possible. I believe that it needs to change so that cities will have more tax money to fix other things and the people who don't deserve to get released won't be. The prison system is very expensive for taxpayers because they have to pay to employ the officers, they have to pay for the building, the tools, the food for them to eat, there clothing and bedding.
Criminal Justice Reform Sources: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/issues/criminal-justice-reform The U.S continues to face a crisis of mass incarceration that seems to be growing bigger and bigger each day in this country. There are nearly two million people in prison in America today, according to the Obama White House Archives, over twice the number there were 30 years ago, when there were just 500,000 in jail. There are fewer than five percent of the world's population in the United States, but there are more than 25 percent of the world's prisoners there. Approximately $80 billion of the national budget is spent on keeping people in prison in the United States every year.
Mass incarceration is the way that the United States has locked up millions of people over the last forty years using unnecessary and disproportionate policies. Contrary to popular belief, this is racially fueled as most of these policies saw to it that blacks and latinos be locked up for longer than their white peers and for smaller crimes. These racist roots within the system can be traced back to when the first slave ship arrived in the US. But our first major prison boom was seen after the American Civil war. I know that the Civil War was far more than forty years ago.
The amount of mass incarceration in the United States as reached an all time high over the years. Mass Incarceration is the incarceration of a person or race based off of them being different and can be identified as a trend among law enforcements. These tensions have reached a certain extent and has received the attention of American citizens and the nation’s government. The laws of the United States seems fair, however with the enforcement of these laws, specific groups are targeted and abused by them daily.
In the article, Unwinding Mass Incarceration by Stefan Lobuglio and Anne Piehl, they argue that unwinding the mass incarceration “well neither be cheap nor easy, and to be done responsibly will require a new infrastructure of coordinated community-based facilities and services that can meet evidence-based incarceration needs while also ensuring public safety.” Hence, their argument is clean-cut with evidence in the article to back up their argument of unwinding the mass incarceration. Similarly, a solid fill of a concluding statement upon the unwinding of the mass incarceration as stated in the article, “requires much more than stopping current practices or reversing course by mass commutations and early release programs.” Subsequently, from this article, there are numerous interesting key points, and perspective of unwinding the mass incarceration.
The Kalief Browder Story is a true story based on a kid named Kalief who was arrested due to the fact he was a suspect in the robbery of someone's backpack. Kalief was held at Rikers Island, one of the toughest jails in the country, for 3 years on a crime he may have not committed. Well at Rickers he was tortured by everyone there, but he stayed strong to prove he wasn’t guilty. In the story the man who said Kalief robbed him was robbed by two black people late at night, he could not really identify who they were. But because of this accident he held a bias towards all black kids, this leading up to him seeing two young black males walking down the street, he sees this and assumes it must be the kids who robbed him.
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 several 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. This literature review will discuss the ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system and how mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism has become a problem.
Over 2 million people are currently being held in United States prisons, and while the U.S. may only hold 5% of the world’s population, it houses 25% of its prisoners. In the past few years, America’s prison system has fallen under public scrutiny for it’s rising incarceration rate and poor statistics. Many Americans have recently taken notice of the country’s disproportionate prisoner ratio, realized it’s the worst on the planet, and called for the immediate reformation of the failing system. The war on drugs and racial profiling are some of the largest concerns, and many people, some ordinary citizens and others important government figures, are attempting to bring change to one of the country 's lowest aspects.