Over the last thirty years, the prison population in the United States has increased more than seven-fold to over two million people, including vastly disproportionate numbers of minorities and people with little education. For some racial and educational groups, incarceration has become a depressingly regular experience, and prison culture and influence pervade their communities. Almost 60 percent of black male high school drop-outs in their early thirties have spent time in prison. In Punishment and Inequality in America, sociologist Bruce Western explores the recent era of mass incarceration and the serious social and economic consequences it has wrought.
The authors Eve Goldberg and Linda Evans, writers, and filmmakers, published "The Prison Industrial Complex." This text discusses how the government and private corporations increase mass incarceration for profit. The text states, "For private business, prison labor is like a pot of gold. No strikes. No union organizing.
My Year in A Women's Prison, a true story written by Piper Kerman, further verifies the true nature of incarceration and the nervousness that surrounds re-entry. As of 1980, the United States' state and federal prison population has propelled itself from 300,000 to 1.6 million (CITE 7). How could
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.
Recidivism costs the state of Florida more than $150 million annually (Florida Department of Corrections). A strong financial incentive is not the only thing bringing Florida legislators to the table however; electoral calculations also are a draw for the legislators. Reducing the amount of felons in Florida through education programs and through an improved rehabilitation system while cutting state prison spending is a platform that appeals to Democrats and Republicans alike. Legislators campaigning for re-election will be able to tout effective criminal justice reform as one of their accomplishments over their past term. When a task force studied recidivism for the state of Florida in 2004, it concluded that “the loss of civil rights upon conviction of a felony” (Miller and Spillane 405) was an element of Florida’s criminal justice system that needed to be reformed.
There are many reasons where incarceration may lead to higher crime in a community. High incarceration rates damage a community’s stability, and these high rates weaken the power of informal social control in ways that cause an increase in crime. When people are released back into the community, but are then sent back to prison, this cycle keeps going, which causes residential insecurity, which is also associated with social disorganization theory. High imprisonment rates breaks down neighborhood dynamics, which also increases crime. Families become unstable, political and economic systems become weakened, and social networks are broken down.
Incarceration does not only affect those that are in prison but also the families and communities the prisoners are from. When it comes to visitation at San Quentin, Megan Comfort argues that visitors are treated as criminals because of the control they have to go through before visiting. Visitors mostly comprised of women. Most of the time, these women were forced to learn the hard way of visitation on their own. In some ways it seems as though the COs know they have control over these women and their time, so they cross boundaries such as, sexualizing their outfits and taking away their personal belongings.
Upon exiting prison, people that were convicted work hard to rebuild their lives and join society. However, for African Americans, rebuilding their lives comes with an extra roadblock. Most African American people that entered the prison system entered when they were in their adolescents. The criminal justice system, however, “move[d] to deny prisoners’ educational services, disadvantaging their job and career prospects when released” (Miller and Garan 95). Because they lacked the basic “educational services” needed to get a job after being incarcerated, African American people aren't able to provide for themselves immediately.
article he focuses on the impact of mass incarceration on African American families and the challenges that they faced. He also includes the 1965 report “The Negro Family”. He also talked about different stories and victims, he gives data tables and graphs, and also digs up information from history. Coates article is 84 pages long so I am sure he had a lot to get off of his chest. Coates stated, “Family breakdown” “flows from centuries of oppression and persecution of the negro man.
When people get out of prison they are afraid of going back. They don't have a reason to change. Most people don't have a way of even getting a job once there out as stated here, ”I work in a medium security prison in North Carolina that serves young men ages 18 to 25. There is one segment of our population that no program addresses. This is the group that will probably never be able to get a GED, and therefore they do not qualify for many of the programs designed to help with job
In comparison to other countries around the world, America has the highest incarceration rate (Class Discussion). Yet still, crime remains at a constant state. Other countries, such as Germany and Norway, have low incarceration rates, low crimes rates, and prefer rehabilitative alternatives to incarceration (Class Discussion). The irony of America, is that for decades evidence has indicated a crime decrease, incarceration increase, and defects in the criminal justice systems effort to prevent reoffending. A benefiting factor of high incarceration rates is the increase of free labor from prisoners.
III. Prison system affects poverty ● America 's prison system is increasing the poverty in The United states. According to “Out of prison and out of work: Jobs out of reach for former inmates” an article by published by CNN, written by Tanzina Vega the united states has 5 percent of the world 's population but 25 percent of its prison population. A large part of this is due to unemployment. As can be seen in an article published by VICE named “Why Is Getting a Job After Prison Still Such a Nightmare for Ex-Cons?”.
The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for several reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. This literature review will discuss the ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system and how mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism has become a problem.
Homelessness after leaving these correctional facilities is common and the system requires much improvement. (Anon., 2016) Unfortunately these systems don’t always go to plan, many people who have spent their younger years in correctional institutions find it hard to readjust and end up homeless and jobless with little motivation to change their situation. (Hall, 2015) This is an ongoing issue that seems to be only getting
Specific Purpose Statement: To invite my audience to see the different viewpoints involved with life after prison in the U.S. Thesis: Those who were once in incarceration live with the title of being a former convict the rest of their life. I wish to explore their lives after incarceration and I hope to find the differing opinions some of you may have on those that have re-joined our community. Pattern of Organization: Multiple Perspective Pattern Introduction [Attention-Getter] How would you feel knowing you were standing behind a convict in line at a grocery store?
