Mass Incarceration in the United States Essay

Introduction

For many past generations in America, ethnic minorities have faced discrimination and deprived of equal rights and fair opportunities. It started with the era of slavery then followed the issue of racism during the Jim Crow era. During this era, Black Americans were placed in second-class citizenship status. Just like race being a social construct, so is the assumption that most incarcerated individuals are the Blacks. Mass incarceration in the Jim Crow era explains how the handling of convicts has contributed to a new racial based judicial system and the only way to bring change is through immense societal change. The criminal justice system regularly concentrates on psychoactive drugs used by the marginalized communities; they are unduly targeted, arrested and incarcerated for drug felonies. This essay discusses the issue of mass incarceration with racial basis on African Americans and how the criminal justice system is affected.

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Today's American society lives in the 'new Jim Crow era' which distinguishes African Americans and downgrades them to a status of second-class citizenship (Kilgore, 2015). Several Native Americans, Latinos, and Blacks are perceived as a danger to the society, drug traffickers, and violent. The current mass incarceration can be attributed to modifications in the judicial policies, particularly the severe penalties subjected to racial-basis in fighting drug use in the nation (Alexander, 2010). The nation takes advantage of this mass incarceration particularly on Black Americans as a form of cheaper labor which benefits the country's economy,and this is with no doubt regarded as the twenty-first-century slavery.

The rise of Mass Incarceration

Life in America's prisons is monotonous, violent, and ugly. Prisoners are handled impulsively and still, after release, the injury and stigma from incarceration do not end. The huge growth in population in America's prisons is as a result of several bureaucratic practices, judicial rulings, and legal reforms such as drug laws. Alexander (2010) connects the issue of mass incarceration to the long decades of discrimination and racial injustice in the United States. Racism according to Alexander, has been the key justification and a historical cause of mass incarceration (Alexander, 2010), and with no doubt, this is a fact. American men of color face imprisonment at a higher level than the whites (Enns, 2014), an argument that is justifiably dominant to reviews of mass incarceration. Economic discrimination, most of which is as a result of the current and past racial prejudice, plays a critical part in deciding who ends up in incarceration. Unlike Jim Crow, racial supremacy is not an explicit validation for the rise of mass incarceration, and during the past years, the population in America's prisons has expanded overall ethnic and racial groups (Kilgore, 2015). But as Alexander looks at this issue in a moral perspective, the explicit rationale does not matter: its impacts excessively affect the blacks in the society hence portraying mass incarceration as a de facto if not de jure, an instance of the politicised racial prejudice (Alexander, 2010).

I wholly agree with Alexander's (2010) moral point of view to the rise of incarceration. Nevertheless, the difference of races in prisons matters when it comes to the real dogmatic likelihoods of ending mass incarceration. Jim Crow's legal structure was purposefully and quickly implemented and appreciated regular statutory protection; essential modifications and immense public resistance in America's legal system were essential to bring an end to the issue (Alexander, 2010). Mass incarceration, by contrast, is as a result of a host of new and past customs, such as casual practices with minimum to no protection in the judicial system. But still, this makes it difficult to oppose that the incarceration system in the U.S is a colossal established bully of African Americans in the nation. The main cause of the mass incarceration of African Americans, I would say, is the community's joint decision to be more punitive as a result of the campaign on the war on drugs. The harsh criminal policies practiced on every U.S citizen continues due to the dual legal system implemented from the bequest of racial prejudice in America. Racism permitted the society to evade the balance between society's desire to retain civil freedom and its mandate to be harsh towards crimes, by enhancing inequality in the judicial system. In essence, tying the crime to individual traits like religious affiliations or race permitted the society's majority to vote for harsh criminal laws without bearing the complete weight of these rules, allowing the policies to be constant in the long run(Enns, 2014).

Although the government believes that mass incarceration is leeway to cheap labor and economy benefits for the nation, it still reduces economic prospects in some ways. The circumstances surrounding incarceration contributes to habits and behaviors that negatively match with the schedules of normal performances. Time spent in jails limits the experiences that a prisoner can get out of work as compared to the free man. The stigmatization which comes with being incarcerated also affects individuals when they go hunting for jobs after being freed since employers have a preference for clean profiles among the job seekers. This experience of incarceration and the post-release impacts on employment opportunities leave formerly incapacitated parents with minimum capabilities to support their children financially. Families in the black community also get affected since on most occasions mothers are left to be breadwinners, and others end up languishing in more poverty than before the incarceration.

The Criminal Justice System

It is evident that punishment and crime are multidimensional problems which stem from racism justified by historical beliefs and perceptions about the people of color. America has a dual criminal justice system which aids in upholding the social and economic hierarchy in the nation, based on the suppression of African Americans living in the country. Criminal behavior, the media and society, public policy, and the judicial system, all contribute to the mass incarceration of black Americans. The criminal justice system portrays a racial injustice society due to the harsh police encounters faced by African Americans today and how the law serves this disempowered group of citizens(Enns, 2014). The judicial system effects and affects each living in the United States. While the nation has been cracking down on illegal drugs through the war on drugs, crime rates have been declining very slowly, as the rates of incarceration have been on the rise, and the subsidies for the war on drugs is more than the fundings for former and current drug users.

Law enforcers are at liberty to choose who to arrest and kind of offenses to face penalties. One way in which the police perform discriminating prosecution is racial profiling. It is often contended that racial profiling has value if it results from statistical discrimination, that is, race used to signify people who are more likely to be offenders(Alexander, 2010). For instance, race of a law enforcer is essential in deciding who is observed, and this proposes that profiling has its basis on favoritism because statistical discrimination implies that the officer's race is trivial to making choices in implementing the law. The other discretion to racism is the decision made by prosecutors who are frequently disregarded for their role in racial inequality in the disciplinary system. Preliminary rulings submitted by the prosecutor can clarify a significant number of the unaccounted penalty gap between whites and blacks. Prosecuting attorneys are more likely to penalize an African American with an offense which is below the obligatory minimum against a white perpetrator. This practice in the judicial system explains why racial prejudice persists even after the implementation of determinate penalties (Enns, 2014). Not only has the war on drugs led to the incarceration of non-aggressive lawbreakers at a rising rate but has also contributed to a rise in unjust arrests and mass incarcerations.

Ameliorating the Issue of Mass Incarceration

It is indisputable that mass incarceration excessively overwhelms families and the impoverished individuals. When evaluating the offenses which lead to incarceration of individuals, it is evident that in most cases there is a history of psychological instability, drug use, and hardship among the criminals' lives. At times, those released back to the society are worse off than when they got into prison. Alternatives to incarceration offer more options to the judicial system and the offenders' life as well. For instance, it is illogical that the huge rise in population in U.S prisons is as a result of slamming offenders in jails just because they are drug users. Most of the crimes in America's streets are related to drugs, and this can decline if the huge proceeds brought on by drug interdiction face eradication. Drug use and addiction can efficiently and cheaply decline through treatment than incarceration of the perpetrators as a form of practicing law enforcement.

It is also ironical that the society is willing to provide employment, education, and technical training to those incarcerated but is not ready to invest in the same people before being imprisoned. The society needs to face the reality of having to invest in African Americans to accomplish economic and social equality by redirecting funds used in incarceration to improving the economic state of the marginalized groups (Kilgore, 2015). This approach will help this group of citizens to live a comfortable life and stay off the streets thus reducing chances of getting into the wrong hands of the law and in turn lead to a decline in crime rates and mass incarceration.

With the lack of a comprehensible moral opposition or a set of historical roots of mass incarceration, unfolding its phenomenon needs establishing a spate of details. To fully understand the atrociousness of the incarceration system and start improving the situation, we require the effort of social science. The social costs of incarceration are huge that they appear to claim statistical rather those individual descriptions (Alexander, 2010). Although in instances of the actual radical end of reducing the jail population being of concern, objective actions of ethical opinions and damage could have minimal value than direct evidence. The issue with imprisonment is indeed incarceration itself, and the impression that dehumanizing perceived offenders could lead to some positive outcomes is illogical. In my opinion, incarceration in a brutal and humiliating judicial system is not the solution and will never be.

Even though laws of mass incarceration have recently received some consideration as a result of its high costs, failing to deal with the issue of racial bias inherited from America's forefathers and its links to economic subjugation might lead to a continuation of the Jim Crow reinvention. Therefore, to improve the issue of mass incarceration in this nation, and for the society to transit beyond its racist behavior, the state as a whole has to re-educate its citizens about race. After which the society will be required to invest in community programs targeting youths at risk of getting in trouble with the law.Diversity among professionals in the criminal justice system with high discretions: judges, prosecutors, and police officers also ought to be ensured to accomplish the economic parity fought for by Martin Luther before his demise. This social push can be implemented through scholarships or student loan programs for those who wish to get in the public service sector through the crimi...