Incarceration

million people. Would it surprise you, that although the U.S is home to less than 5% of the world’s population, we have 25% of the world’s overall incarcerated population? Our country has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Michelle Alexander writes in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, that the impact of the drug war has been astounding. In the last few decades, the U.S. population of incarcerated citizens exploded from around 300,000 to more…

are all at different levels. Some are more important than others and affect everyone differently. One of the problems in our country is youth incarceration. Youth Incarceration needs to be reconfigured into a positive changing experience for troubled teens instead of a horrible time that effects the reason of their lives in a negative way. Youth incarceration is when a young adult younger than eighteen is sentenced to serve a certain amount of time in a detention facility or an adult prison if…

States has the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world. A shift in prison policies over the past few decades has received most of the blame. In response to high crime rates, politicians did not want to seem "soft on crime" and enacted policies such as lengthy sentences, mandatory minimums, and "three-strikes" laws. Along with this shift in policy came a shift in the nature of the prison itself as incarceration rates skyrocketed: are prisons for punishment, or…

As a nation, policies, and legislation have been implemented in order to better shape human behavior. However, in spite of laws and policy, the sudden rises in incarceration have included women more so than ever before. According to (Beck, Karberg, & Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2001, p.1) and (Guerino, Sabol, Harrison, & Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2011, p.1) women in prison increased by 646% between 1980 and 2010. Since 1870, when the first female prison…

problems for prisons because the needed cost of keeping those prisoners healthy and alive are high. Eric Holder, once stated that it cost $35,000 per inmate or $80 billion dollars a year to maintain a prison. Furthermore, people believe that mass incarceration is the answer and is effective but it is the opposite. Moreover, prisoners as well as people react differently to the feeling of being crowded physically and mentally. Researchers show that there are many negative effects on inmates from…

Incarceration rates in the United States have been on the rise since the 1970s, expanding America’s prison population into uncharted territory. Never before in the history of our nation have so many men and women been within the walls of our penal institutions. Further, after inmates are released the likelihood they will recidivate is significant. While it is not the goal of this piece to examine why the prison population has expanded so drastically, a discussion is in order as to whether or not…

Rights Act was passed. The white-black income gap has persisted since 1967, remaining relatively unchanged. Black men were more than six times as likely as white men to be incarcerated in federal and state prisons, and local jails. In 2010, the incarceration rate for white men under local, state and federal jurisdiction was 678 inmates per 100,000 white U.S. residents; for black men, it was 4,347. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, black men were more than six times as likely as…

Service Learning Reflection During my time at New Hope, there was one boy, *Kory, that I drawn to from the beginning. I really don’t know how to explain it but I just felt like I was meant to know him and to help him. He had these sad eyes that seemed to be crying for help. One thing I learned about Kory early on, is that you never know which version of him you are going to get. Some days he would be talkative, rambunctious, and completely lacking self-control, causing him to get in trouble…

Cure Violence is a violence prevention program that works with communities that have high levels of violence in an effort to address gang violence and reduce retaliatory killings1. This program applies public education, anti-violence slogans “Don’t shoot. I want to grow up.”, conflict mediation and community mobilization activities2. The Cure Violence program is currently active in 25 cities in the United States as well as several international cities3. In New York City, the Cure Violence…

People go into the prison system just to be released with the skills to put them right back into the prison. Mass incarceration is caused through tough on crime which is put to the extreme when looking at the United States, who’s incarceration rate is 6,851,000 inmates (Bureau of Justice Statistics). Mass incarceration does nothing to deter crime but does lead to overcrowding in jails. As pointed out by Eleanor Goldberg in her (2015) Huffington Post article, “overcrowding…