Mass
incarceration is a major issue facing the United States today. America is
number one in the world in number of prisoners per capita, and has been for
quite some time now. As of 2013 American incarceration rates were 716 per
100,000 citizens, which is much higher than other industrialized countries
(Wing 2013, paragraph 2). A New York
Times article by Adam Liptak puts this into perspective, “The United States has
less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of
the world’s prisoners” (paragraph 1). As you can imagine, this leads to more
tax money being spent on running and maintaining these prisons. It also tears
apart families and communities. People are ripped away from their families and
sent to jail for nonviolent offenses such as probation violations and drug
possession. Prisons should be used to keep violent criminals off the streets,
but they are essentially turning into a place to hold members of society that
we don’t know how to handle. Instead of
really looking into the reasons why people commit crimes and addressing that,
we just lock up offenders and throw away the key. Treatment and programming
should be our response to crime, not a solution that won’t benefit the offender
at all. Sure prison can be a wake up call for some, but if they don’t have the
resources or ability to change on their own, this wake up call will only work
for so long.
President
Johnson’s war on crime, which was declared in 1965, is often cited as the cause
of mass incarceration. The war on drugs declared by President Regan in 1982 is
also cited as a cause (Alexander 2010, p.5). The war on crime and the war on drugs
allocated more resources for police departments. According to Alexander, when
the war on drugs was declared, police officers did not like the federal
government telling them which type of crime to focus their efforts on.
Especially since they thought they should focus on more serious and violent
crime. In response, the federal government offered grants to departments that
made fighting the war on drugs a top priority (2010, p.73). The war on drugs also led to police officers
riding the line between constitutional and unconstitutional when it comes to
searching individuals and their property. The Supreme Court ruled in a number
of cases that police officers were allowed to search an individual and their
belongings if the individual consented to the search (Alexander 2010, p. 62).
Since most people do not refuse when asked by a police officer to do so, this
led to an increase in drug related arrests.
Another major part
of the problem is the mandatory sentences imposed for drug crimes. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 enacted
mandatory minimums for drug crimes. This took discretion away from the judges,
which means they cannot take mitigating factors into account such as a first
offense.
By defining mass
incarceration this way, we are assuming that our high incarceration rates are
caused by political decisions such as declaring war on drugs and crime. When we
point to these “wars” declared by Presidents and claim these are the sole
causes, we take blame away from individuals. Yes, most offenders are products
of their environment, an environment that exists to keep certain people down, but
is that the sole cause for their criminal behavior? Also, we are assuming that
crime rates would not have risen without these wars. The increased crime rates
could be due to more violence on television and violent video games. Yes, we are assuming the war on crime and the
war on drugs are the cause of mass incarceration, but with the data and
information available, it is hard not to.
References
Alexander,
M. (2010). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
New York, NY: The New Press.
Liptak,
A. (2008, April 23). Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’. The New York
Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/us/23prison.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
Wing,
N. (2013, August 13). Here Are All of the Nations That Incarcerate More of
Their Population Than The U.S. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/13/incarceration-rate-per-capita_n_3745291.html
