Mass Incarceration Redefined

Mass incarceration is a crisis in the United States.  Thanks to an expansion of awareness around the issue, partially due to Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” and the loud voices of advocates, the general public is becoming more aware of this horrific social problem.  However, how people define the issue is another battle.  Many individuals who are personally unaffected by mass incarceration or do not study it, may not fully understand the issue.  Some believe that individuals end up in jail because they made mistakes and that is it.  However, mass incarceration represents a larger societal issue.  With the prison population rising so astronomically over the last 30 years, it must be clear to society that there is a greater force at play and a defect in society allowing this to occur.

The war on drugs launched in the 1980s fueled the growth of the prison populations.  For starters, legal penalties surrounding drug play a huge role in the expanding prison population since a majority of inmates are incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses.  Additionally, the systematic political and social barriers that inhibit returning citizens contribute to ”employment and financial difficulties, poor marriage outcomes, disruption and instability in children’s lives, and increased rates of communicable diseases such as HIV-AIDS have all been documented among the communities so disproportionately affected by incarceration policies” (Raphael, 2007-2008). As a result, citizens who are returning to such communities reenter the cyclical patterns they started in and change becomes difficult and upward mobility almost impossible.

Mass incarceration is not an individual issue, a county issue, or even a state issue.  Mass incarceration is an American problem that strongly affects politics, society, and the economy.  If changes are not made soon, the issue will only continue to grow.  It was our hope that this blog would bring about awareness of the issue to begin to educate the problem not only about the problem, but the various facets embedded in the problem.  Finally, we hope that this blog will continue with your help, your comments, and your support in spreading awareness about mass incarceration and encouraging research and education.

 

Mass Incarceration and Poverty Theory

How can we understand poverty to affect change for incarcerated

 individuals and returning citizens?

        As a social worker, it is pertinent to understand poverty theory, its different components, and how it affects not only individuals in society, but also social policies.  According to Ted K. Bradshaw’s article “Theories of Poverty and Anti-Poverty Programs in Community Development”, there are five major theories as to why poverty exists:

      1.      Individual

      2.      Cultural

      3.      Political-economic Structure

      4.      Geographic

      5.      Cumulative and Cyclical

While all five theories of poverty represent reasons why poverty exists, not are all widely accepted.  For example, theory number one blames an individual’s character and choices for their poverty (Bradshaw, 2007).  While this and the other aspects of the theories hold some valid points, they must be carefully analyzed before fully embracing them.  Each individual’s situation is different and individuals living in poverty are affected by an array of outside influences.  No one theory can apply to an entire community or group of people.  However, I believe there is one exception when studying returning citizens living in poverty.

            According to Bradshaw, progressive social theory embraces the idea that poverty is caused by economic, political, and social distortions or discriminations (Bradshaw, 2007).  One such instance this can be applied to is mass incarceration.  Individuals, who have been incarcerated, also known as returning citizens, are often held back in society due to social and political barriers that inhibit their mobility.  According to Steven Raphael’s work at the University of California, Berkley, “employment and financial difficulties, poor marriage outcomes, disruption and instability in children’s lives, and increased rates of communicable diseases such as HIV-AIDS have all been documented among the communities so disproportionately affected by incarceration policies” (Raphael, 2007-2008).  Because of policies that inhibit returning citizens from obtaining certain jobs and the social stigma surrounding former inmates, it becomes difficult to escape poverty, especially when entire families are involved.

            Poverty theory number three regarding political and economic structures is applicable to mass incarceration because political and social policies deliberately discriminate against former inmates.  These restrictions highlight systematic barriers that prevent such individuals from accessing education, employment, housing, benefits and other resources necessary to escape the cycle of poverty.

 

Raphael, Steven. "The Employment Prospects of Ex-Of- Fenders." Social Policy

Approaches That Promote Self-Sufficiency and Financial Independence Among

the Poor 25.2 (Fall/Winter 2007-2008).

Bradshaw, Ted K. "Theories of Poverty and Anti-Poverty Program in Community

Development." Community Development: Journal of the Community Development


 Society". 38.1 (2007): 7-25 

Looking at Mass Incarceration Through Labeling Theory

When most people think about crime and mass incarceration, they view it as an individual problem, not a social problem. They think that only those incarcerated and their families are affected. They also most likely see it through the lens of rational choice theory. Meaning they think people commit crimes because they weighed the pros and cons and made the rational decision to commit a crime, not taking societal factors into account. When looking at mass incarceration through the lens of labeling theory, it is seen as a societal problem because it is societies fault for labeling someone as a criminal.  If people would see mass incarceration as society's fault, maybe more people would see it as a social crisis as opposed to a social problem that doesn’t affect most people. This is why I think labeling theory is the best theory to define mass incarceration.

How Labels Affect Crime and Mass Incarceration

Labeling theory could very easily be applied to the issue of mass incarceration. First, let’s define labeling theory. In general, labeling theory proposes that someone commits crimes because they have been labeled a criminal. The first labeling theorist, Frank Tannenbaum, goes into a little more detail in his book Crime and the Community:

            The person becomes the thing he is described as being. Nor does it seem to matter whether the valuation is made by those who would punish or by those who would reform. In either case the emphasis is upon the conduct that is disapproved of. The parents or the policeman, the older brother or the court, the probation officer or the juvenile institution…Their very enthusiasm defeats their aim. The harder they work to reform the evil, the greater the evil grows under their hands. The persistent suggestion, with whatever good intentions, works mischief, because it leads to bringing out the bad behavior that it would suppress. The way out is through a refusal to dramatize the evil. The less said about it the better. The more said about something else, still better (Braithwaite, 17).

Tannenbaum’s suggestion about refusing to dramatize the evil is very interesting. In some ways it seems like a good idea, and for other purposes, not so much. The idea reminds me of training a dog or how adults tell children to handle bullies. If a dog is begging, trainers say to ignore the behavior, because if they get attention when they beg they will learn that they get attention every time they do so and they’ll continue to do it. When someone was picking on you in school the adults said to just ignore them and they’ll stop. To apply this idea to actual crimes, we could ignore crimes and maybe the people committing them will stop doing so. This of course could not apply realistically to all crimes, especially ones with an identifiable victim. However, if we decriminalized the use, possession and sale of drugs we would definitely have less people in our correctional system. After all, what people choose to put into their body, no matter how bad it is, is their choice. Alcohol and greasy foods are legal and they are bad for your body.

Okay rant over (for now), back to labeling theory.

            Labeling theory assumes that the opinion of others and society at large matters to the deviant person, or effects them in any way. I don’t know about you, but I never believe someone when they say they don’t care what others think. This assumption of course is more than just worrying what someone might think of you. It’s about how society’s view of a person affects their life.  For example, if someone is convicted of a felony they are labeled a felon, which means they do not have the same rights as other Americans. For example, they cannot receive federal student loans and in some states they cannot vote. They also have a hard time finding a job. Most applications ask the applicant to check a box asking whether or not they have been convicted of a felony. Also more and more jobs conduct background checks before hiring a person. This legal form of discrimination really hurts a felon’s (or anyone else with a criminal record) chance at getting a job. If a convicted drug dealer was making enough money to live comfortably when he was dealing, what is his motivation to apply to a number of businesses, only to get turned down by every one of them? Could you really blame that person for going back to the profitable work they know?

            Another way labeling effects crime and our society is labeling a person as deviant because of their race. As discussed in previous posts, a disproportionate amount of African Americans are in the correctional system in the United States. Evidence shows that because of that (and because of racism), police officers tend to stop and arrest them more than others. Therefore, African Americans (especially those that live in disadvantaged neighborhoods) are labeled as criminals. Discrimination also occurs during sentencing. When judges and juries look at an African American who allegedly committed a drug crime, they most likely see them as just another thug dealing drugs. However, if a white person is on trial for the same crime, they see them as a kid who got mixed up with the wrong people. These assumptions are based on sentence disparities between races, not personal assumptions about their thought processes.

I work as a probation officer and I see my coworkers discriminate all the time. When we’re out in the community and we see a child or teenager glares at us, or even if they are just playing with friends, my coworkers have said things like “unfortunately, they’ll probably be on probation when they grow up”. As if saying unfortunately makes it not racist, or makes it seem like they care. When people are labeled as criminals at young ages because of their race, neighborhood or family members they are much more likely to fulfill that prophecy.

References:

Braithwaite, J. (1989). Crime, Shame and Reintegration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.