“The Land of the Free”
America prides itself on our supposed dedication to personal freedom, even going so far as to name ourselves “The Land of the Free”, but how true do we stay to this self-given title? According to the Sentencing Project, incarceration rates have increased by more than 500 percent in the last 40 years, and also estimate that there are approximately 2.2 million people in prison or jail in the United States. Surely this must be a global issue though, perhaps crime has simple skyrocketed in the modern era, however this doesn’t appear to be the case. According to the International Centre for Prison Studies’ “World Population List”, despite only being home to approximately 4.4 percent of the world’s population, we hold around 22 percent of the world’s incarcerated population, a vastly disproportionate 2,239,751 prisoners, compared to other countries such as Canada with 40,544, Mexico with 246,226, England & Wales at 84,430, and Russia at 681,600.
On top of this, its important to look at who makes up this prison population, The Sentencing Project states that “More than 60% of the people in prison today are people of color. Black men are six times as likely to be incarcerated as white men and Hispanic men are 2.7 times as likely. For black men in their thirties, about 1 in every 12 is in prison or jail on any given day.” this increased incarceration rate is a direct result of the war on drugs, half of the prisoners in federal prisons were convicted of drug related crimes, a number that is 10 times greater than in 1980. Despite more widely being associated with Ronald Regan, the war on drugs started during the time of Nixon, with the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, which divided drugs into 5 different classes, or schedules, based on their addictiveness, medical use, and safety of use. So what launched this war on drugs that would so heavily spike the incarceration rates, especially of minority me, in America? According to a CNN report, John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s domestic policy chief, stepped forward to say that "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people...You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities... We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." Following Nixon’s presidency comes the election of Ronald Regan and with him comes Regan’s Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which, “Among other things, [changed] the system of federal supervised release from a rehabilitative system into a punitive system.”
Following this drastic increase in prison population comes the question of how are these prisoners going to be housed? The answer turned out to be not only an increase in the building of prisons int he US, but also the creation of privatized prisons, which make up around 8.5 percent of prisons, and more importantly profit of higher incarceration rate, who then are able to invest their profits back into buying of politicians to push for legislation that increases incarceration rates. In 2016 and continuing in his current campaign, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders advocates for the abolishment private prisons, and online News Outlet “The Young Turks” covers both his statements as well as the issue with private prison having the ability to pour money into buying of legislators: https://youtu.be/E6frR_oda2M?t=91 as well as calling back to previous interviews the outlet has conducted with former police officers discussing their intentional stricter patrolling of lower income and minority populations.
Through this we can see that the sky rocketing of incarceration rates in the supposed “Land of the Free” not only originates form, but continues today as an incarnation of bigotry and against minority and lower income populations, and it begs the question: why are we allowing this to continue?
Quiz Questions:
1- What percent of the world’s prisoners are held in America?
2- What US president started the War on Drugs.
3- During what decade did the drastic rise in imprisoned population begin?
Discussion Questions:
1- What are your thoughts on the drastic increase in prison population, do you think it is justified or should these people be forgiven of non-violent crimes?
2- What are your thoughts on the ability of corporations, whether it be private prisons or others, to donate mass amounts of money to politicians and essentially buy their vote? Do you think this undermines our democracy?
Post I replied to:
Incarceration, both the extent and the severity of it, is indeed a national scandal that hasn't received the public attention it deserves. Interesting connection to the Nixon era, and its "Law and Order" agenda. A more enlightened approach would be to target the causes of criminality and fashion a response more likely to rectify them. Locking people up, confining them in inhumane and sanity-impairing conditions, and sometimes returning them to civilian life without adequate transitional support, will not do it.
ReplyDeleteCareful what you say, the government is always watching! This should go without saying it at all, but I guess it's better than public executions decreed by kings who could care less. Then again, I would be driven mad if I were sentenced to life for possessing weed. Interesting analysis indeed.
ReplyDeleteI don't know that I would say there should be forgiveness for non-violent crimes per se, but certainly a different approach to handling it. Clearly prison systems do not solve the problem, it just gets criminals out of the way for a while.
ReplyDeleteI feel that depending on the the extent of the non-violent crime forgiveness could be considered, but as your report as well as others show this current prison system isn't doing what it was intending, and with the amount of prisoners that return to prison, there definitely is evidence that our current prison system needs to change.
ReplyDeleteLesley Walker - Section 10
ReplyDeleteAs someone who works in a Rutherford County jail, it's hard for me to decide whether or not I think people should be "forgiven" for non violet crimes. I think forgiven is a bad choice of words for what should happen, and so much of it is on a case by case situation. I think that our justice system is flawed, and anyone who doesn't believe that to at least some extent is just crazy and oblivious to the many problems. I see so many of the same people in and out of jail and it is hard as a person to continuously want them to be better and do better, but know they are a part of the revolving door of inmates. I think there are so many different forms of "correction" to behaviors society has deemed to be undesirable and unacceptable. I think that often the idea of "punishment" over "correction" is the wrong approach to fixing the issues with society. That's why facilities are called "correctional" and not "punishment". I tell inmates all the time that it's not my job to punish them, the courts already did that, but what I am there to do is help facilitate an environment that can correct their wrong doings. Like I said, as someone who sees this kind of thing every single day, it's hard to say what really should be done for a lot of people, but I can say that most of what is being done isn't fixing anything, but rather just making it worse.