Race Going To Prison Essay

There are more African Americans in prison now, than there were enslaved in 1850. These individuals are not in prison because they are committing more crimes than their white counterparts, but because of a discriminatory system that targets african americans. Blacks can commit the same crimes as whites, but are more likely to be imprisoned and or receive a steeper sentence. This disproportionate racial sentencing has been a growing issue the United States for four decades, and started with the Reagan Administration's War On Drugs. Private prison organizations lobby for harsher punishments, and profit from the influx of inmates.

The American dream at one point was what drew people to American; the right to life, liberty, and the happiness. The American dream is the hope to acquire currency, large homes, raise a middle-class family, and pursue what brings people joy in life. But in the year 2016, the American dream becomes hard to believe in. The American dream may still exist, but it is not equally accessible to all Americans. This is true because the American dream is not affordable for everyone, it is not available to everyone from different degrees of education, and race and ethnicity creates large social barriers.

Thesis: It is very important for the sake of Americans tax dollars that we change the way that prisons are run and increase the productivity of inmates so when they are released from jail they are ready to be a productive member in society and have the confidence to achieve new goals. Introduction: Day after day, millions of inmates sit in jail doing nothing productive with their lives. We are paying to house inmates that may not even have a good reason to be there. For example, drug offenders are being kept with murderers and other violent offenders.

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.

People of all different races and ethnicities are locked behind bars because they have been convicted of committing a crime and they are paying for the consequences. When looking at the racial composition of a prison in the United States, it does not mimic the population. This is because some races and ethnicities are over represented in the correctional system in the U.S. (Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 2018). According Walker et al. (2018), African-Americans/Blacks make up less than fifteen percent of the U.S. population, while this race has around thirty-seven percent of the population in the correctional system today.

Taking all of the studies, background knowledge, and statistics into consideration, I do believe that there is an unproportionate amount of black men serving time in the criminal justice system. It has been proven that men of color are particularly likely to be imprisoned, in comparison to their non black counterparts. “African Americans serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months). (Sentencing Project)” The sentencing of black men is commonly dealt with in a harsher manner, than with other races.

According to a report by the state of Washington, the answer seems to be no. For those convicted in trafficking drugs, offenders are almost always charged with the most serious (in the case of multiple charges). Usually, in order to facilitate a plea, the charges will be reduced. Whether or not the defendant pleads guilty at the trial is one of the most important elements in sentencing. Circumstances of the arrest are just as important.

Prison is the last place Bigger dreamed he would end up. The road to this prison was paved by the side effects of the racism he had dealt with in his life. The psychological effects of racism on African Americans consistently pave a road that ends in incarceration. Bigger shows that these effects can affect his self – worth, inhibit social interactions, and change the way he sees himself. The book foreshadowed the consequences of racism on Bigger 's psyche from the beginning with the apartment scene.

There are multiple sources of law in the UK. Such as creating sources which refer to Parliamentarians and Judges. Material Sources, for example, Westlaw; Lexis; Law reports and lastly authoritative sources which include Statutes; Judicial precedent/cases. This essay will focus on Judicial Precedent and its importance by discussing firstly, what it consists of, the advantages and disadvantages and finally whether it is the most important source of law. Judicial Precedent is a source of law, in which the court follows a decision that has already been made in a similar case.

A 2016 advertising campaign for an Indian clothing retail website proudly names itself “Be You”—a campaign, which it’s creator envisions as “breaking stereotypes” in order to allow the bold and brave youth of today to create “a personalized fashion statement”. Clearly, there is a need to promote the idea that not only do one’s choices make them ‘unique’, but also that by allowing one to ‘personalize’ the way they look through the clothes they wear, there seems to be a clear attempt to materialize a distinction between what is ‘me’ (or, in this case, ‘you’) and what is everyone else. When this advertisement tells one to “Be You”, what it also seems to essentially say, is that “you” are a distinct, unique identity, and your choices in clothing must represent these differences between “you” and everyone else.

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.

To begin with, the overall rates of incarceration in America is staggering as a whole. The population has grown exponentially during the last few decades, raising each and every year due to more opportunities in crime committing. Not only the raising rates occur on a federal level, but a state level as well. Discovered by John Hagan, a research professor and co-director of the center on law and globalization at the American Bar Foundation, and Traci Burch, assistant professor in political science at Northwestern University and Research professor at American Bar Foundation, that between the years 1920 and 1975, the state and federal prison population represented about 1 in 1,000, where as by 2001, .69 percent of the population was in prison