Mass Incarceration in the Land of Freedom Paper Example

For decades, the rise to mass incarceration in America has brought a tremendous shift in the five-year downward trend. As a sign, various reforms at the state and federal level had to reduce imprisonment due to the devastating effects. However, many criminal experts stated that while there is still roll to cut down on detention, the biggest challenge is the growth of prisons in the last few decades and how convicts are being jailed for longer jail-terms instead of shorter terms (Clear 150). Based on the evidence produced, it was discovered that long jail terms do not reduce crime. While Incarceration affects a country, the essay will show why it raised in the United States.

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This makes the incarceration levels harder for citizens to get good jobs, especially when they leave prison, thus making giving them a chance to re-offend again. Therefore, to neutralize the incarceration levels, the government has to put more energy to make it useful and efficient. In response to this, the report released by the Justice Department argued that mass incarceration is still a significant challenge in the United States-in that most recent reforms all end up in imprisonment rates (Wildeman 76). According to experts, they believed that for several years, the policy reforms at the federal and state level have always tried to reduce incarceration, but it was all in vain because of the full terms.

The states were, therefore, required to be ambitious in any reform; they passed with the aim of reducing the population. Based on Brian Elderbroom report, he said that moral lessons have to be learned to reduce incarceration (p.52). One example was the drug court reforms when they tried to place the drug offenders into rehabilitation programs than being jailed. Even though the plans have heard a success story before, evidence still shows that the current reform tends to benefit people that had a short jail term or even for the first time (Elderbroom 78).

The initial problem is that was the federal reforms and the state concentrated on the property offenses and low-level drug and not violent crimes. Most prisoners were convicted because of violent crimes. While it was not easy to reduce their prison sentences, evidence showed that they were instead given long-term jail terms (Elderbroom 92). Research also discovered that individuals with violent offenses were the once given long-term jail terms.

These people were not only ineligible but had diverted reforms such as drug courts which allowed them to have reduced jail terms. Experts also added that the changes for violent crimes especially for older criminals should be facilitated. The study indicated that older people engaged in previous crimes should be released because they might not be a threat to society (Keiser 50). However, those that committed a severe criminal offense in respect to their incarceration were supposed to have reduced jail terms. For instance, armed robberies that committed crime at twenty years was not necessarily the same person when at the age of forty.

To accomplish this, the lawmaker needs to establish policies that equalize every individual no matter the type of crime they were convicted of so as the sentences can be reduced when there is evidence of rehabilitation or good behavior. The policymakers also need to add actions that eliminate or relax the three-strikes law, more policies and the mandatory minimum sentences to make hardcore criminals to serve longer jail terms (Keiser 54). The effect is that the policy trends would dramatically shift. Based on reports released by the Sentencing Project, approximately one out of nine prisoners in the U.S are serving life sentences, and the rate of imprisonment is so high that the sentence reduction has been overwhelmed.

Since Barack Obama became president of the United States, he showed the citizens the meaning of freedom through his positive message that expressed his appearance on the world stage. If someone lacked money for instance or marginalized, there was hope for such individuals. When the issue of prisoners is taken into account, the largest population in prisons were the African American particularly the men in the urban areas and were mostly known as felons for life. These prisoners were permanently relegated by law and as the second-class status. Most of them were denied the right to vote and were also excluded from juries.

Most of them were also discriminated against housing, access to education, employment and public benefits all because their parents existed during the Jim Crow era. Most civil and criminal law in the U.S is enforced and made by the local governments and states. Each state, in this case, had a degree of sovereignty, its legislation, constitution, legal codes and powers to handle matters that were not preempted either by the federal laws or constitution. The states also had similar laws on crime like murder and rape that had lesser treatment but depending on each country.

The country also established laws that governed the right dispose and hold property, regulate consumer services and products, torts, corporate and business law as well as civil matters. However, the responsibilities and rights of citizens were not made uniform across the state. Moreover, critics showed that the system never alleged stronger rules as compared to other countries. The protest also revealed that the belief of Americans failed to explain how ideal it would be when expressing their laws, constitution and the court rulings.

Some critics also showed that there were disparities in the laws about national and minorities treatments because of continued institutional prejudice. Others have also added that there was unequalness to high-quality lawyers. The argument here was that the overcrowded jails and overburdened courts were as a result of substandard treatment of convicted and suspected criminals. The fault, in this case, was seen in the laws that punished the drug offenders severely and limiting the rights of citizens to use and hold their property.

During the laws applied by Jim Crow, there was the subordination of relegation of the black Americans. This is because they enhanced literacy tests and regulations for voters to prevent blacks from engaging themselves on juries. His rules affected Amerca so much because nearly a dozen of the population came from the Southern States. Michelle Alexender also wrote on her book 'The new Jim Crow....the Age of Colorblindness,' stating that many civil right movement gains were undermined by the mass incarceration when the black Americans brought war concerning drugs (Alexander 88).

Alexander also added that even though the laws enacted by Jim Crow are now in books, the majority of blacks that were arrested for minor crimes remained disfranchised and marginalized trapped by the criminal justice system (Alexander 102). The system also ended up branding them as felons. This denied them significant opportunities and rights to be productive, law-abiding people in a country. The majority of them, particularly in poor communities of color, were swept into the criminal justice system at very early ages.

Typically, the minorities that never committed non-violent crimes were shuttled into prisons and also branded as felons or criminals. When they are released, they were relegated to the second-class status citizens thus stripping away their rights. Their issue was, however, won during the civil rights movement and was given the powers to be free, serve as juries and free from legal discrimination that was left behind during the Jim Crow era. For years, this law has helped many Americans, including the minorities to have rights to many priorities offered by the state.

Today in the United States, since 7 out of 1,000 citizens are in prison it makes the state to have the highest incarceration rate worldwide. In the U.S, more than 5.6 million people or 37 residents per city have spent their time in jail (Gottschalk 188). The incarceration rate in the U.S has also risen in the last 20 years. According to critics, incarceration in the United States has been increased because of problems like drug use. Other countries dealt with this problem through treatment programs to avoid using different drastic means (Gottschalk 204). However, the system in the U.S concerning defenders sharply increased incarceration due to prison sentences used to reduce crime.

The rate of incarceration is however not uniform across the population segments. For instance, women were incarcerated at a higher rate compared to men. Even though the incarceration rate of women rose rapidly than for men, six out of ten prisoners were members of the ethnic or racial minority (Gottschalk 195). Black people in the U.S had higher chances of getting life imprisonment than the white citizens. The U.S was also one country that prevented prisoners from voting.

Moreover, individuals convicted of a felony were permanently stripped of their right to vote in federal, local and state elections. This was because the inequalities in the justice system contributed by disenfranchising large groups of minority citizens. Moreover, out of 40 million citizens, on out of 50 people are ineligible to vote because they have past criminal conviction records. Of the total number, 1.4 million are blacks which according to statistics it comprises to 14 percent of America's black male population (Gottschalk 135). However, even though not all prisons have the right to vote, the majority of them that were in long jail terms were reduced.

Conclusion

The rise to mass incarceration in America as elaborated in the essay made it harder for citizens to get good jobs especially when they leave prison. The initial problem is that was the federal reforms and the state concentrated on the property offenses and low-level drug and not violent crimes. If someone was sick for instance or marginalized, there was hope for such individuals. However, those that committed a severe criminal offense in respect to their incarceration were supposed to have reduced jail terms.

For instance, laws on crime like murder and rape that had lesser treatment, but depending on each state. The reason for incarceration was that Americans failed to show how ideal it would be when expressing their laws, constitution and the court rulings. The rate of imprisonment, in this case, was not uniform across the population segments. During the rules applied by Jim Crow, there was the subordination of relegation of the black Americans. The majority of blacks in this case that were arrested for minor crimes remained disfranchised and marginalized trapped by the criminal justice system. Moreover, women were incarcerated at a higher rate compared to men.

Works Cited

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, 2011.

Clear, Todd R. "The Impact of Incarceration on Community Safety." Imprisoning CommunitiesHow Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse, 2007, pp. 149-174., doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195305791.003.0007.

Elderbroom, Brian. "Senior Men of Color: Surviving Racism and Sexism: Lessons We Have Learned." PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2001, pp. 41-101., doi:10.1037/e512002004-001.

Gottschalk, Marie. The Prison and the Gallows: the Politics of Mass Incarceration in America. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Keiser, Lael. "Policy Levers for Sustainability: The Federal Level." Sustainability Policy, May 2015, pp. 45-82., doi:10.1002/9781119209447.ch03.

Wildeman, Christopher. "Mass Incarceration." Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets, 2012, pp. 75-84., doi:10.1093/obo/9780195396607-0033.