James Kilgore's Understanding Mass Incarceration

Throughout FYS we have mainly been reading from James Kilgore’s Understanding Mass Incarceration. Also, we have read a number of different authors shorter articles. We have conversed amongst the class and occasionally looked for our own answers outside of the assigned text. With the overwhelming amount of information available to us about mass incarceration we can start to develop our own opinions regarding the subject. A couple questions that could help us delve deeper into the subject could be “why are so many people being put in prison”? or “is there something we can do to lower these numbers”? With the number of people who know someone or are affected by someone in prison, it is an important matter for us to be educated on. On the topic …show more content…
Many of the authors opinions were very similar to mine. One in particular, Donna Murch, thought that prison was for punishment, but also for businesses to make money off of. She tells us that it takes advantage of people by writing “It also makes money through asset forfeiture, lucrative public contracts from private service providers, and by directly extracting revenue and unpaid labor from populations of color and the poor” (Murch 1). Some, however, thought that incarcerating someone was a bad idea all together. With different ways to deal with a criminal they could achieve the same goal. This is a concept that I did not think of while learning about mass incarceration. Some of the alternatives would be restorative justice and transformative justice. With restorative justice, the person that is harmed is given some sort of peace from the person who harmed them. In some case it is a simple apology or even repaying them with money or time. This is a way for people to solve their problems on their own without the government having to intervene. Transformative justice looks at why someone is committing the crimes that they are and tries to get to the root of the problem. Many think that this form of justice will be more beneficial in the long run than immediately. Personally, …show more content…
In my first essay I answered that “The purpose of mass incarceration is to protect the everyday citizens”. I also wrote that “it serves as a type of punishment to the people that have committed the crimes”. My current answer is partially the same as my first answer. The part of my answer that is the same is the punishing of the criminal. In my initial answer I said that another reason for incarcerating someone was to keep other people safe. Now, I think that this is more of an outcome of someone’s incarceration than the purpose of it. There are both bad and good outcomes of incarcerating someone. Some of the bad include affecting their families, possible harm in prison, and making it hard for them to live after being released. At the same time, good things do come out of incarcerating someone as well. Some of these results are more safety for the public, and the prisoner accepting responsibility for what they did. Even though the point of mass incarceration is to punish a person for their actions, the outcomes of the incarceration are really what people should worry