Assess The Causes Of Incarceration And Crime

Seven million three-hundred thousand Children nationally are affected with parents having to be in jail for days, weeks, months, and even years. For ten days I was affected by my father being in jail at Leavenworth County Jail. To some, this is nothing but to my family this was a big deal. Not only was he gone for ten days, which was longer then he’d ever been gone before, but we had to take him there and watch as he walked away from his wife, his kids, and his freedom.

In this day and age, There are five times as many people in jail as there were in the 1970s. Almost 5 percent of the population of the United States will go to prison at in point of their life. Conservatives believe that imprisonment reduces crime in two ways: it removes criminals from the public so they can not commit more crimes, and it also discourages people who would commit a crime as they consider the consequences. Unfortunately, neither of these outcomes have come to be true. In fact, mass incarceration and “tough on crime” laws have been extremely ineffective that instead of reducing crime, it increases it. There are several different ways to effectively reduce crime other than these two strategies, such as reforming certain policies

In America, 2.3 million people are in prison. American has the highest prison population in the world. This is due to “tough on crime laws” that have been enforced since the 1960’s. Although these laws do help keep crime off the street, they have done more harm than good for our country. Mass incarceration is a major issues in America, it leads to poverty, broken families, money wasted, and many other problems. Although everyone can recognize mass incarceration is a problem, they are different ways people think it should be dealt with.

Some examples of an unwanted child may be among teen moms, single moms, and rape cases which may increase crime rate if these women were forced to have children and failed to give them a superb upbringing. High incarceration rate is used by Levitt and Dubner as one of the background reasons why crime has dropped since the 90’s (the background with abortion being their main reason). According to Levitt and Dubner, “Harsh prison terms have been shown to act as both deterrent (for the would-be criminal on the street) and prophylactic (for the would-be criminal who is already locked up).” (123) They use several pieces of evidence for this showing definite crime drop when more people were put behind bars; however, a lot of evidence used with this theory is conceded by the complete opposite idea. Levitt and Dubner used the study “On Behalf of a Moratorium on Prison Construction” (123) to counter and, in the end, strengthen their theory of incarceration rates. This literature review will answer the following question: Do high incarceration rates in fact deter criminals from commiting crimes and, if there is a link, how big of an impact do they

Slavery, Jim Crow, the ghetto, and the carceral apparatus are all structural institutions that share a mutual beneficial relationship where each has supplemented and historically progressed into more advanced subtle forms of oppression and racism. Past and current regimes served as social functions with the objective of encompassing African Americans in a permanent subordinate position. In each generation, newer developments of a racial caste emerge with the same objective of repudiating African Americans citizenship. The only thing that has changed since Jim Crow is the language we use to justify racial exclusion (Alexander, 2). These four regimes are genealogically linked because they all advanced and developed from one another. As the generations progress, newer forms of social control, racial exclusion and oppressions develop. All of these regimes function as a racial caste system that locks a stigmatized racial group in

The high incarceration rate of Black Americans has pervasive and chronically negative stigmas regarding the social and economic vitality of the Black American community, such as a lack of democratic participation and violence within urban communities (Burris-Kitchen & Burris, 2011). According to Forman Jr. (2012), some of 5 the negative affects of systemic racism of Black Americans born into the hip-hop generation who have been convicted include the ineligibility of public assistance programs such as health care, food stamps, public housing, student loans, and some employment opportunities. Additionally, many of the individuals suffering from the stigma of incarceration come from backgrounds of disadvantage such as single parent homes, low

When society is not accepting the newly released prisoner, it makes them feel like they don’t belong, so they go back to their old ways,which involves reoffending. For instance, when a person has served a long-winded sentence,it could be hard to convert what society is now versus what it was before. In addition, programs are provided to reduce the rate of recidivism, but the effectiveness of the program is the bigger issue. Programs tend to be generalized and do not meet the needs of an inmate on an individual level. Also, the program could lack the essentials such as funding and proper staffing. Without those necessities, it could take away from the effectiveness of the program. Peer pressure and other provocations can also be a contributing factor to recidivism, especially for juveniles. For example, a juvenile might think that they earn the respect of their neighborhood and believe that going in and out of prison is “cool.” A previous example in the text explains economic stress. Economic stress could be summed up using Robert Merton’s Strain Theory. It’s all about finding your place in

My findings focused on the points that mass incarceration substantially affects families and jobs, which then become factors in the issue of recidivism. Moreover, these problems especially target minorities at high rates. To strengthen these points, I could have done more interviews, especially with past convicts or convicts who have returned to jail in order to get more first-hand experiences. As well as interviews with different ages of children exposed to incarceration to see if or how the effects differed. In the future, I hope to expand on the other ways incarceration affects lives, such as through health, especially mental health, or college opportunities. Maybe even focusing specifically on the effects of incarceration on younger people,

Several peculiar institutions have had the ability to effectively control, confine, and define blacks in America’s history. Systems included chattel slavery, which was the turning point of the plantation economy, the Jim Crow era legally upheld segregation and discrimination, and the mechanism of ghettos which are comprised of minorities, parallel to the collective proletarianization and urbanization of blacks. Lastly but not least, the carceral apparatus has helped to perpetuate a social and economic hierarchy, due to the subjugation of minorities, within the US directly affecting life outcomes of those who are directly and indirectly affected.

A shift is happening in America. The pendulum is swinging from the ideals of get tough and mass incarceration. The swing has both positive and negative affects on the prison system. On the plus side, prison populations are decreasing. By shifting away from incarcerating any who break the law, there are fewer drug dealers and fewer violent offenders in the system. The other side of this trend is that many who make these choices are likely to become repeat offenders.Individuals also may escalate their negative behaviors to more violent or disturbing crimes. The punishment may not do enough to deter these actions in the future. Opinions on the best way to handle criminals are as vast as the varying crimes committed. Some say that these individuals

According to Phelps (2013), as from 1998 to 2007 states that had the greatest increases in incarceration rates failed to observe a corresponding drop in crime rates. On the other hands, states such as New York, Texas, New Jersey and North and South Carolina that lowered their incarceration rates in favor of community corrections programs experienced a drop in crime rates (p.53). Incarceration has also failed in correcting prisoners. Most of the prisoners always go back to committing crimes once released from prison. It has led to a rise in the recidivism rates of prisoners. Recidivism refers to the repetition of criminal behavior (James, 2011). According to the United States Bureau of Justice 2010 statistics report, three-quarters of released prisoners are constantly rearrested for new crimes and more than half of these go back to prison in a period of two to three years after their release. Ex- inmates account for an approximated 19 percent of all arrests (Phelps, 2013, p.55). Criminals who return to the community are also most of the times worse off after a period of confinement than when they entered. It is attributable to the fact that these inmates learn antisocial and criminal attitudes from other

In 2000, U.S. agencies surpassed the $100-billion-a-day barrier in spending to incarcerate individuals with serious addiction problems. Rehabilitating and managing offenders who misuse alcohol has proven to be extraordinarily difficult. Despite traditional sanctions and ever-increasing terms of incarceration, addiction drives many of these offenders to continue committing crimes, resulting in a revolving door.

The United States is faced with a major issue of mass incarceration and prison overpopulation. With the largest prison population in the world and the second highest incarceration rate per-capita (1 in 100 citizens is behind bars), the United States’ corrections system needs to be reformed now, through both policy and administrative changes. While I am certain you are familiar with these statistics, I would like to emphasize that using incarceration as the primary response to social problems as is happening today in the United States not only impacts those individuals incarcerated and their families, but also costs tax payers billions of dollars.

The literature answers the issues of incarceration rates increasing by giving us the product such as legislative decisions that were the primary reason that led to the increase of charging and imprisoning more offenders as well as increasing sentences, limiting prison release, and expanding the prison capacity. Higher incarceration rates were not the sole reason for the increase in crime. Prisons were continuing to be built even though crime had been declining. Later resulting in the sharpest decrease in crime in American history. Essentially every states incarceration rate was increased by 150 percent from 1970 to 2000, and the median state increasewas 390 percent, which was taken from the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2012. Having analyzed

You brought up a subject that does not get enough attention as it deserves- the affect of incarceration on families. There is always lots of discussion and debate in the media about crime, victims of crime, police, and prisons. I do not think we hear nearly enough about the detrimental affect that incarceration has on families and communities. These effects can be great and long-lasting. Like you mentioned, one negative result is the loss of income from a missing, incarcerated parent. This must, in many cases, have a large, negative affect on families and their economic stability. It is difficult to be a single parent and if a parent is suddenly forced in this position when the other parent gets incarcerated, the family may have to move or drastically change their lifestyle to compensate for the lower income. This loss of income can be extremely damaging to