Impact Of Mass Incarceration

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All of the articles I have read stated the same things when it came to the demographics of the prison population. They stated that the people who are mostly incarcerated are people of color, predominantly African-American and then Hispanic men. In the article “Inside Rikers: The Social Impact of Mass Incarceration in the Twenty-First Century” by Jennifer Wynn, she stated that when she visited Rikers and was waiting in the waiting room, she was the only white person there (Wynn, pg.1). She later found that ninety percent of the inmates were black or Hispanic (Wynn, pg. 2) and that ninety three percent were male (Wynn, pg. 4). Although not as large as black men, there has also been an increase of minority women’s imprisonment. According to the …show more content…
Also, there is an extended history in the United States between people of color and police brutality (Martensen, Pg.219). This causes friction between the people in these communities and the law enforcement and provides a ‘social distance’(Martense, pg. 219). There is a lack of trust between the people in these disadvantaged communities and the law enforcement which leads to them being less likely to go to the police when something occurs and also are hesitant to cooperate with them (Martense, pg. 219). For these, and some other reasons, came about the “don 't snitch norm”, which criminalizes the whole community (Crutchfield, Weeks, pg.47). Without the law enforcement and other governmental agencies on these disadvantaged communities side, this leads to ‘social disorganization” which leads to a lack of a sense of togetherness within the community and networks needed in order to fight the oppression the community faces (Martensen, pg 219). Therefore, mass incarceration sustains injustices and disadvantages of a …show more content…
In the article “The Collateral Damage of Mass Incarceration: Risk of Psychiatric Morbidity Among Nonincarcerated Residents of High-Incarceration Neighborhoods” by Mark Hatzenbuehler, Katherine Keyes, Ava Hamilton, Monica Uddin, and Sandro Galea, the authors conducted a research in Detroit by using telephone number obtained from the US Postal Delivery Sequence Files and a list-assisted random digital frame. They conducted forty minute phone survey and also used a Patient Health Questionnaire to measure symptoms of major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. They found out the incarceration rates of each neighborhoods by obtaining each person 's address and looking up their zip codes (total of 28) in The Justice Atlas of Sentencing and Corrections. They conducted the interviews in “waves” being one year apart. Wave one consisted of 1547 participants, wave 2 included 1054 individuals , wave 3 included 965 respondents, and wave 4 included 614 respondents. They found that individuals living in neighborhoods with high incarceration rates were more likely to meet the criteria for current major depressive disorder , current general anxiety disorder and lifetime general anxiety disorder than the areas with low incarceration rates (Hatzenbuehler, Keyez, Hamilton, Uddin, Galea, pg.140). They concluded that this may be due to social capital and lack of beneficial social relationships, stigma, and the

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