According to the Prison Policy Initiative, by the end of 2016, about 2.3 million people out of the total US population of 324 million has spent at least some time behind the bars – this is about 0.7% of the population. Statistics regarding incarceration rates placed the United States on...first place in the world in 2013. Mass incarceration research topics help students document and reflect on the causes of this phenomenon but also help understand the reasons for the witnessed racial disproportion among convicted individuals. Many mass incarceration research topics are on the impact of this phenomenon on individuals and local communities and on the country as a whole, but also on ways to reform the system.
America: The Mass Incarceration Station Mass incarceration has been plaguing Americans since President Richard Nixon. As a result, lives have been ruined by the stigma around drug addicts and drug charges. Also, money lined the pockets of the greedy monsters who make money to keep...
The 13th significantly highlights the key aspects comparing, slavery to mass incarceration. The Jim Crow laws came about, after slavery during the years of 1877 through the 1960s. People think that the Jim Crow Laws were just a set of anti-black laws, but it was...
The United States has the highest incarceration rate among developed countries and the rest of the world. The question of “why” is always asked. In order to understand the answer to that question, a look back into history is necessary. There is no one specific...
Whether or not explicit, power and privilege shape our understanding of crime and justice. This paper will aim to answer the research question, ‘how does the criminal justice system further racial disparities among African American males in the United States? ’ In order to answer...
America has been taking measures to ensure that crimes do not go undetected or unpunished. This has led to an increase in the number of people who have been incarcerated. In recent years those who are being incarcerated come from all races, religion, genders, and...
Mass incarceration can be defined as the incarceration or imprisonment of a large number of people. According to the Prison Policy Initiative blog, the current rates of mass incarceration in the U.S are as follows: Local Jails has 721,654 inmates, Federal prisons 216, 362 prisoners...
Throughout American history, people of color have been targeted, especially in the criminal justice system. After the 13th amendment was passed, Southern whites utilized its loophole to imprison black people for petty crimes, so they could use them as free labor. Later, Jim Crow laws...
Introduction United States has many of its citizens increased than any other country in the word. The sentencing laws that have been put in place which focus on extending prison terms as well as ensuring that repeated offenders are locked for many years have significantly...
Decades after the ratification the 13th Amendment, slavery still exists in the United States in various ways. Currently, mass incarceration is the greatest form of slavery in America as it was depicted in Ava Duvernay’s documentary titled “13th”. The criminal justice system in the United...
For this paper, I intend to focus on Michelle Alexander’s award-winning book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, which centers itself on the object of mass incarceration. Alexander’s stunning account of the American mass incarceration system pulls to the forefront...
Introduction When people think about childhood in the United States, they often think of their families. Fond memories, as well as a few harsh ones may come to mind. The reality of childhood can include some darker subjects, ideas that seem too adult for a...
Introduction Mass incarceration is something that goes on most countries especially countries in highly regressive regimes like Russian, China, Iran, Germany, and many more countries. However, the United States is known to now have the highest rate of incarceration in the world. This is due...
Even though the United States has been declining crime rates for more than two decades, it still keeps incarcerating a large amount of the population. The lack of justice from the police department towards African Americans and Latino men grows disproportionately. Mass incarceration is the...
The U.S. has a history of certain policy-making that has deliberately incarcerated a mass amount of Blacks and Latinos disproportionately over the course of the past fifty years. Throughout that course of fifty years, the policies implemented were sought out by public figures who hid...
The New Jim Crow Book Report “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” was written in by Michelle Alexander and was published on January 5, 2010. Michelle Alexander is a professor at Union Theological Seminary and graduated from Vanderbilt University. Michelle...
Abstract The purpose of this extended essay is to answer the question, “To what extent is the disproportionate incarceration of African-American communities responsible for black nihilism?” Nihilism, according to Cornel West, is the “lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaningless, hopelessness, and...
In Doing Time on the Outside, anthropologist Donald Braman investigates an aspect of the effects of mass incarceration that is oftentimes neglected by other scholars. Through analyzing personal accounts of families with close relatives in prison and of those incarcerated as well, Braman claims that...
Twenty billion dollars. This is the amount of money we once paid annually for prisons. That may sound like an absurd amount, but what’s even crazier is the fact that this amount has quadrupled since 1980. Since the cost of prison is a cause and...
In The New Jim Crow, by associate professor Michelle Alexander, Alexander adamantly fights for her readers to recognize the severity of racism entrenched in our social and political systems. She does this by describing how Jim Crow laws of the past have disguised itself into...
My name is Angie Canas, I am currently enrolled in Hartford Public High School Law & Government. This testimony is being submitted to you the Criminal Justice System Reform Committee, to express how mass incarceration affects the community around me. Mass incarceration affects a lot...
Dr. Martin Luther King is a man that worked hard in hopes that one day blacks in America could have the same rights and the same opportunities like that of the whites in America. He dreamed the all colors of skin in America could learn...
Merton’s strain theory, in general, is a theory found in both sociology and criminology that states that society puts certain pressures, referred to as strains, on individuals to achieve socially accepted goals e.g. the American dream, despite having the means to do so, may lead...
America tops the world in incarceration rates and ratios per population. “As of mid-2006, approximately 2.2 million Americans were incarcerated in local jails, state and federal prisons.” In the 1970s the incarcerated ratio stood at 165 per 100,000, in the 1980s, the proportion increased to...
Depression, anxiety and stress are among the mental health problems common experienced by people. According to the World Health Organization-Philippines 2017 global statistics, more than 300 million people are battling depression, or an increase of more than 18 percent during the period 2005-2015 (Mateo, 2017)...
”Our criminal justice system is not as smart as it should be” and ”Mass incarceration makes our entire country worse off, and we need to do something about it” is what President Obama declared in 2015. Now, in 2020, five years later, despite all the...
Author Note In your lifetime, the racial makeup of the prison system has changed considerably. In the 1960s, the majority of the prison population was White, and reflected the majority status of whites in the U.S. population. Today, in many places, this trend has reversed...
Mass incarceration is a term for the extremely high rate of incarceration in the United States for both adults and youth. It refers to the large number of Americans who are at higher risk of being, who are currently, and who have been, incarcerated in jail, prison or subject to a court-ordered probation.
Factors
There are three factors that sustain mass incarceration: 1) over-policing in redlined and marginalized communities, 2) longer sentencing for minor crimes, and 3) endless restrictions after being released.
Solutions
The four priorities to incorporate in reform to reconstruct justice system: 1) reducing crime, 2) rethinking how we define crime and sentencing, 3) rehabilitating incarcerated individuals, and 4) ensuring that people successfully re-enter their communities. With these goals in mind, there is potential to reconstruct a system that will provide and enforce justice for all.
Facts and Statistics
The "war on drugs" is responsible for America's massive prison and jail populations.
The United States has one of the highest incarceration rates.
91 percent of people transitioning from incarceration report experiencing food insecurity.