Argumentative Essay On Mass Incarceration

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. I may not be a mathematician but I do know that much. When I say "mass incarceration", I'm talking about the more modern idea of mass incarceration. The difference here

For many African Americans during this time, that meant that you were freed as a slave only to be arrested and deemed a slave once again. How does this relate to mass or wrongful incarceration today? Well, what I'm trying to do is to create a timeline of how twisted the "judicial" system was and still is. I mention the confederacy because it is an accurate representation of how racist the roots of the United States are and also on a side note, how anti American the confederacy actually was. A concept that many do not seem to be aware of. So without further or due, let's get into

That's a lot of people right? I mean think about that. Our world is fairly large. There are over 7 billion people in this world (keep in mind that number is increasing rapidly) and 5% of that is living here in the United States. But what if I told you we are also home to 25% of the worlds' prison population. What a concept. The "land of the free" is home to 25% of the worlds' prison population. That's a lot of people behind bars with their hands in shackles for this to be the land of the free. Now, as I had previously mentioned, the term "mass incarceration" was coined in the 70's to describe the beginning of an era in which people are arrested in dramatically high numbers. During former US president Richard Nixon's time in office, he took on the war on crime and the war on drugs. Which at first glance looks like a positive thing but once you dive deeper into what his real motives are, it's rather eye opening. Let's start with the war on crime. During this time you had the black panthers who were people fighting for civil rights, people who were fighting for women's rights, and people who were fighting for gay rights. Nixon felt the need to fight against these movements and therefore one was more likely to get arrested for attending these rallies— for committing a crime which really wasn't a crime. He strategically blinded the public to this by calling it "the war on crime".