“The Prison Problem”
Known op-ed columnist and writer, David Brooks, in his essay, “The Prison Problem”, describes how this destructive era of mass incarceration came about. Brooks’ purpose of this essay is to insinuate how much the ‘prison world’ has changed from many years ago, to the society that we know of today. He creates a concrete tone in order to convey us readers to the idea of how the incarceration rates have skyrocketed since past decades. Brooks begins his essay by acknowledging the fact that the war on drugs has gotten out of control back in the 1970’s. He appeals to this by saying many non-violent people did get sent to jail. Yes, this has dropped crime rates back then; but now, sending people to jail for little crimes leads to the ripping apart of families, increase of racial disparities and the destroying of lives in general. He emphasizes this in order to give off the effect of what has happened in just the past 40 years; how much has changed in such a little amount of time. To manifest this, Brooks provides us with stats of the current day incarceration. According to the article, about 90% of American’s prisoners are held …show more content…
Brooks described him as wonderfully objective, nonideological and data-driven. In Pfaff’s research, he finds that lawmakers tend to make the prison sentences longer than needed. It is a fact that roughly half of all prisoners range terms from two to three years and only 10 percent serve more than seven years. In like matter, it supports and implies that in Pfaff’s theory, it’s the prosecutors who have gotten more aggressive within the past couple of decades. More and more plea bargains and prison terms have been produced. But why now are they more aggressive? Theories have been made that people are more political now more than ever. They want to show toughness to impress others for future references. But refining this issue is only the start of
Known op-ed columnist and writer, David Brooks, in his essay, “The Prison Problem”, describes how this destructive era of mass incarceration came about. Brooks’ purpose of this essay is to insinuate how much the ‘prison world’ has changed from many years ago, to the society that we know of today. He creates a concrete tone in order to convey us readers to the idea of how the incarceration rates have skyrocketed since past decades. Brooks begins his essay by acknowledging the fact that the war on drugs has gotten out of control back in the 1970’s. He appeals to this by saying many non-violent people did get sent to jail. Yes, this has dropped crime rates back then; but now, sending people to jail for little crimes leads to the ripping apart of families, increase of racial disparities and the destroying of lives in general. He emphasizes this in order to give off the effect of what has happened in just the past 40 years; how much has changed in such a little amount of time. To manifest this, Brooks provides us with stats of the current day incarceration. According to the article, about 90% of American’s prisoners are held …show more content…
Brooks described him as wonderfully objective, nonideological and data-driven. In Pfaff’s research, he finds that lawmakers tend to make the prison sentences longer than needed. It is a fact that roughly half of all prisoners range terms from two to three years and only 10 percent serve more than seven years. In like matter, it supports and implies that in Pfaff’s theory, it’s the prosecutors who have gotten more aggressive within the past couple of decades. More and more plea bargains and prison terms have been produced. But why now are they more aggressive? Theories have been made that people are more political now more than ever. They want to show toughness to impress others for future references. But refining this issue is only the start of