Race Class Incarceration Research Paper

Race, Class, and Incarceration The main goal of the U.S. law enforcement has been to make the world a safer place but in the process of making the world a safer and “better” place there have been quite some downfalls. One of those many downfalls would have to be the American prison system. In today’s society police enforcement has given so much focus on prosecuting street crime while failing to acknowledge white-collar crime and other major crimes that occur every day. As demonstrated in Trends in U.S. corrections, the U.S. has had the highest rates of incarceration as of 2011 adding up to more than seventy hundred thousand(The Sentencing Project 3). Race and class play an important role on who is punished for such crimes as well as who gets

This has only led to more and more prisons being created which cost a lot of money. “Since 1984 more than twenty new prisons have opened in California , while only one new campus was added to the California State University system and none to the University of California system”(Davis 686). Instead of focusing on creating safer environments for those who live in areas where crime is predominant we are only building more prisons to just lock everyone up. This is not really solving anything rather it is just avoiding the whole issue itself. Creating theses prisons cost a lot of money because there are man things required in maintaining a prison running. All the money being used for prisons could be used instead as stated by Davis, “…to subsidize housing for the homeless, to ameliorate public education for poor and racially marginalized communities, to open free drug rehabilitation programs for those who wish to kick their habits…”(Davis 686) as well as many other beneficiary programs that can help better a community where crime is visible

What they don 't see is that by using the money on beneficial programs they can reduce the amount of crime in communities who are crime based. Policing in communities of color is beneficial to the Prison Industrial Complex. Which is merely a form of exploitation that prisoners accused of such crimes undergo. They give their labor in return for nothing. “Prisoners do data entry for Chevron, make telephone reservations for TWA, raise hogs, shovel manure, make circuit boards, limousines,waterbeds and lingerie for Victoria’s Secret- all at a fraction of the cost of ‘free labor’”(Davis 686). This is beneficial to the Prison Industrial Complex because communities of color are known to be crime filled. Police can purposely search for criminals in those neighborhoods which then later amount to the number of people who will become workers under the Prison Industrial Complex. People of color become targets because they can easily be found. It isn 't that only people of color are committing crimes it is just that white people are wealthier therefore it is easier for them to hide the fact that they are committing crimes. Criminals are thought to be people from low-income communities. People who have no other option but resort to crime in order to survive day by day. As stated by Davis, “Black, Latino, Native American, and many Asian youth