Section IV: The Causes
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Section IV: The Causes
Changes in law and policy, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase.
Many people are not aware to new laws which makes them more prone to violating them. I think this is why we tend to see more police officers around the time new laws are made because they are expecting people to violate these laws in order to recruit new inmates. The systems modern day slaves.
1. We started sending more people to prison.
A series of law enforcement and sentencing policy changes of the “tough on crime” era resulted in dramatic growth in incarceration. Since the official beginning of the War on Drugs in the 1980s, the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses in the U.S. skyrocketed from 40,900 in 1980 to 452,964 in 2017. Today, there are more people behind bars for a drug offense than the number of people who were in prison or jail for any crime in 1980. The number of people sentenced to prison for property and violent crimes has also increased even during periods when crime rates have declined.
2. We started sending people to prison for much longer terms.
Harsh sentencing laws like mandatory minimums, combined with cutbacks in parole release, keep people in prison for longer periods of time.
The National Research Council reported that half of the 222% growth in the state prison population between 1980 and 2010 was due to an increase of time served in prison for all offenses.
There has also been a historic rise in the use of life sentences: one in nine people in prison is now serving a life sentence, nearly a third of whom are sentenced to life without parole.
I agree with this statement, because people were being thrown into jail, because they had a little amount of drugs on them. Thy are just trying to make money, from the prisons. This is one of the reason why incarceration is going up so high in the US.
I think this is there way of keeping inmates under there control and money in there own pockets. Once you are detained, the system no longer cares about your well being. You are stripped of your independence and they control your every decision. Why would they want to give up that power? This is why inmates are treated so inhumanely in prison as well.
Up prisons and causing a high incarceration rate.
Police automatically think your a drug dealer if you have drugs on you. Police is even locking people up for riding dirt bikes when that is some people hobbies and it may help them from staying out of trouble but the law makes everything illegal just to fill there jails up.
More people in jail, the more the rate goes up, and the more the rates goes up the more money, they are making.
groups from ever getting further in this nation. The war on drugs was created to keep out hippies and the black population. This is a time when the incarceration rate in america soared due to discriminatory merit.The government want to keep certain groups numbers low so that they cant do anything but continue the cycle.
I think they want to keep the population of the country in check, so they can increase the incarceration rate.
3. Mass incarceration has not touched all communities equally
Sentencing policies, implicit racial bias, and socioeconomic inequity contribute to racial disparities at every level of the criminal justice system. Today, people of color make up 37% of the U.S. population but 67% of the prison population. Overall, African Americans are more likely than white Americans to be arrested; once arrested, they are more likely to be convicted; and once convicted, they are more likely to face stiff sentences. Black men are six times as likely to be incarcerated as white men and Hispanic men are more than twice as likely to be incarcerated as non-Hispanic white men.
Black americans are 6x more likely to be inprisoned than white americans. This is true because their is a sterotype around black people that law enforcemnet looks to black americans first. And upon these black americans not all have done the crime they are to go to prison for but they fit the bill.
a black man could be incarcerated for possession of marijuana with intent to distribute and receive life. a white man could do the same and serve 3-4 years then be let off on probation
Questions to consider:
- What do you think MOST causes mass incarceration? Why?
- How do you think this trend started?
- What role does inequality play in mass incarceration?
- What role does the War on Drugs play in mass incarceration?
- Looking forward: What do you predict we can do to end, or at least lessen, mass incarceration?
This led to the mass incarceration of those who sold and abused drugs during this time period. Triggering a chain reaction of the same behavior to occur many years to follow
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As a country We should be working towards a lowering the rate of prisoners rather than having the rate continue to Get higher.
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