User:Arpan.pal1234/sandbox/United States incarceration rate

Ethnic Studies content:

This disproportionality has stemmed in racialization for many years. It is important to understand the background of the war on drugs. The earliest influences can be seen in early Chinese immigration for railroad buildings. One of the first acts against drugs was the Opium Exclusion Act of 1909. It prohibited the smoking of opium, ingested by a vast percentage of caucasian housewives in America, but smoked mainly by Asian American immigrants coming to build the railroads. These immigrants were targeted with anti-Asian sentiment as America had a stigma that they came solely to take away jobs. Experts say that the easiest thing to do if we can't remove our problems by killing them is to throw them in jail, and America found a way to do this by criminalizing aspects of ethnic traditions and practices. This continued with African Americans and cocaine and led to the cycle that we now see today.

The Sentencing Reform Act emerged as the ultimate culmination to this. By going tough on crimes, the United States federal government tried to increase consistency on federal sentencing. This stemmed from a tough on crime campaign headed largely by Ronald Reagan. The Crime rate was steadily dipping by upwards of an average of 8 percent each year, and 12 percent in violent crime in the years preceding the bill pointing to numerous questions at the true motive of the bill. Many experts, such as Michael C. Campbell, a doctorate in the department of criminology at the University of Missouri- St.Louis, declares that the scheme of a war on crime was used for political action. Fear was created among the citizens of the state and thus the country looked to him to keep their doors safe. The effects of this bill on the incarceration are shown in the diagram to the right. The effects on crime per 100,000 capita released by the department of homeland security states that violent crimes remained to steadily decrease; however, in the 10 years following the bill, crimes such as rape, theft, robbery, and murder grew by 6, 4, 3, and 2 percent, respectively. It is important to understand the political domination that a war on drugs and crime created, and thus shapes the prison industrial complex today. While incarceration stays at an all time high, crime was actually decreasing.

The motivation for these acts can also be looked at from an economical lens as well. Private prison companies have 3.3 billion dollars in yearly revenue, once growing by over 175% yearly. Buying and trading goods produced by those in prisons stems from exploiting prisoners as free labor. The running of prisons costs numerous sums of money for American tax payers: 31,087 dollars per year per prisoner, just 3 thousand shy of the national average salary. Companies benefit greatly from the use of these prisoners and the construction of prisons and their infrastructure. This causes more and more to be invested in prisons rather than reform programs to help guide individuals out of prison. Many towns have spawned as "prison-towns" in the last 70 years. These towns are run solely by the prison, and to keep its economy flourishing, jobs must be readily available. They solved this by building a prison and incarcerating more individuals for nonviolent crimes. With more prisoners comes more responsibility to hold the prisoners which creates more jobs. This scheme creates a vicious cycle of incarceration that is also duly responsible for the growth in the incarceration rate. Many experts believe the for-profit private prison expansion motivated by economic benefit, laid down by the foundation of the war on drugs, is the reason why the incarceration rate will remain to increase in the coming years.

It is important to analyze this from a logical perspective as well. Matthew De Michael (Ph. D from William Penn University) frankly states the issues with the American people regarding the recognition of the corruption hidden within the modern era of prisons. He states that the system has a fatal flaw, and though he believes parts are necessary, he notes that money is not invested in reform programs to help get prisoners out of jail and off with jobs. With prisoners coming out of prison with a felony, their chances of receiving a job, experts estimate, are reduced by 78%. To make ends meet, they will fall back into the cycle of drug dealing, and with laws continuing to become stricter and stricter, they will come back to prison. This makes for over-crowding and the ultimate expansion of jails.

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