Incarceration in the United States

be taken away from them, but can be denied or restricted. These rights are universal, inalienable, interrelated, interdependent and indivisible (What are Human Rights 1996). When addressing the universality of human rights, it is essential for the States to protect and promote all human rights and fundamental freedoms no matter what their political, economic, or cultural systems entail (What are Human Rights 1996). These rights are not to be taken away except in special circumstances, such as…

In her award-winning article, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline, and Transformation in Postwar American History,” author Heather Ann Thompson writes that “historians have largely ignored the mass incarceration of the late twentieth century and have not yet begun to sort out its impact on the social, economic, and political evolution of the postwar period.” Historian Elizabeth Hinton’s book, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, is one response to Thompson’s…

Disparities within prisons in the United States are seen among all levels. As a whole the United States alone makes up 25% of the worlds incarceration rates, 1 in 100 adults are incarcerated, these statistics create concern when researching the prison system. There are many disparities such as race, class, and gender and each of these disparities have numerous causes. The disparity within the prisons do not stop inside those walls, the disparity effects the inmate’s families and follows the…

system within the United States seems hand out long sentences without the possibility of parole or giving prisoners opportunities for resocialization. Within this cover story, Williams used a real example on how the criminal justice system gives it’s prisoners a restless feeling. Lenny Singleton had a crack habit back in the 1990s and robbed multiple stores within two weeks, which resulted with him a life sentence without the possibility of parole. This story continues to state that the increase…

INTRODUCTION The causes of mass incarceration, a term used to describe rapid the growth of the United States’ imprisoned population from the early 1970’s until the present day, have been a topic of great debate in recent times. The National Research Council reports that the United States’ penal population of approximately 2.2 million adults, at a rate of 716 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, is the largest in the world. This is an astounding increase from the early 1970s where the rate of…

hard treatment and control are both significant in terms of how punishment is defined and function. Kleinfield, then, explains how human beings decides on the foundations of rights when they choose to punish. Lastly, Kleinfield states how the ideas of…

legally retained in the Jim Crow Laws. These laws, which were prevalent in all southern states, separating black and white Americans in all social settings. The Jim Crow Laws were turned over in the 1960s heavily due to the Civil Rights Movement. However, despite the trends in law enforcement allow discrimination to continue in other forms. Mass incarceration refers to America’s experimentation in incarceration, defined by historically extreme rates of imprisonment and by the concentration of…

the War on drugs and the current legal system in the United States has been designed as a new caste system: mass incarceration. The current system of mass incarceration in the US mirrors earlier systems of racialized social control through racial segregation, political origin, and how race is defined in America. Mass incarceration and previous caste systems like Jim Crow have historical parallels with each other. Politically mass incarceration and jim crow were created by white elites to…

Mass incarceration is a term used to describe the increase in the number of incarcerated people in the United States over the past forty years. The number of people getting put in prison in the United States started to increase since the beginning of War on Drugs in 1982. “US is home to 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world's prisoners”, states the documentary 13th. There are currently more people in jail for a drug offense than the number of people in jail in 1980. The number of…

The United States Criminal Justice System has many problems, but one of the most prominent problems deals with the issues surrounding mass incarceration. Mass incarceration in itself deals with a multitude of problems. The main problem that I am going to focus on is the incarceration of low level offenders. In the United States 1 in 5 incarcerated individuals are locked up for a drug offense (Wagner 2017). In the 1980s and 1990s political figures across America declared a “war on drugs”. During…