Angela Davis, a 1960’s political activist, once said, “Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo – obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other.” When compared to prisons in other countries, America is failing severely behind in all pertinent categories: the amount of inmates incarcerated, the number of inmates that return because of lack of rehabilitation, and the racial stigma that follows the amount of black men in prison. The climbing amount of inmates within the United States is catastrophic. Also, the amount of inmates that are serving life sentences for nonviolent crimes is ridiculous. The prison system within the United States is a failure in design because no actions
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This amount would be a population of a city larger than Houston, Texas. When compared to the prison systems around the World, the United States obviously has the highest amount of people imprisoned by a long shot. This amount is especially captivating when it comes to light that the United States only make up 5% of the World’s population but makes up 25% of the World’s prisoner population. This amount has increased by over 400% since 1980. In a thirty-year span, the American prison system has increased from around 200,000 people to now over 2 million. This is even true for multiple states; over 17 states are over capacity with the amount of inmates they have. This amount of people incarcerated at any given time is astonishing, especially because of the crimes that these inmates are serving time for. Most of this spike in the amount of people incarcerate can be explained by a number of factors but none more than the increase in crime rates, more convictions, harsher sentences, and the sharp escalation of the war on drugs. It has become increasingly more important now to charge and convict a person for minor crimes in an effort to clean up the community. This spike in justice, however, does not seem to consider the drastic amount of people that are now spending their lives in the prison system. With no rehabilitation, these inmates, unfortunately, see the prison walls more than
This amount would be a population of a city larger than Houston, Texas. When compared to the prison systems around the World, the United States obviously has the highest amount of people imprisoned by a long shot. This amount is especially captivating when it comes to light that the United States only make up 5% of the World’s population but makes up 25% of the World’s prisoner population. This amount has increased by over 400% since 1980. In a thirty-year span, the American prison system has increased from around 200,000 people to now over 2 million. This is even true for multiple states; over 17 states are over capacity with the amount of inmates they have. This amount of people incarcerated at any given time is astonishing, especially because of the crimes that these inmates are serving time for. Most of this spike in the amount of people incarcerate can be explained by a number of factors but none more than the increase in crime rates, more convictions, harsher sentences, and the sharp escalation of the war on drugs. It has become increasingly more important now to charge and convict a person for minor crimes in an effort to clean up the community. This spike in justice, however, does not seem to consider the drastic amount of people that are now spending their lives in the prison system. With no rehabilitation, these inmates, unfortunately, see the prison walls more than