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The Problem of Mass Incarceration in the USA
Sir San Diego
formerly brolic scholar
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What's the problem though? Things are going as planned IN the constitution.
The 13th amendment is all that you need to know my dude. Slavery abolished EXCEPT...
It's a business not a rehab.
The 13th amendment is all that you need to know my dude. Slavery abolished EXCEPT...
It's a business not a rehab.
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This video is upsetting and it doesn't even touch on the most messed up topic regarding incarceration in America: the rise in private, for-profit prisons.
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This was an interesting study of private prisons and the increasing numbers of minority prisoners.
[h1]Why Minorities Are Even More Overrepresented In Private Prisons[/h1]
Harrison Jacobs
http://www.harrisonjacobs.com
http://twitter.com/@harrisonxjacobs
https://plus.google.com/103812582245310527609?rel=author
Feb. 15, 2014, 9:56 PM
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http://www.businessinsider.com/christopher-petrella-private-prison-study-2014-2#comments
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AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
A new analysis of America's prison demographics has revealed for-profit prisons jail minorities even more disproportionately than publicly operated prisons.
For-profit prisons — like those operated by Corrections Corporation of America — use contractual provisions to target young, healthy (and therefore more profitable) inmates, the study in the journal "Radical Criminology" found. And younger prisoners tend to be minorities, due to drastic changes in prison demographics over the last 30 years, the study noted.
While minorities are disproportionately incarcerated in all prisons in America — The Sentencing Project, a reform advocacy group, puts the number for racial and ethnic minorities as high as 60% of those imprisoned — the percentage of minorities in private prisons is often higher than 60% in some states' private prisons and reaches 89% in California's private prisons, according to the study recently published in the Journal of Radical Criminology by UC: Berkeley doctoral candidate Christopher Petrella.
Petrella's study looked at nine states with large private prison populations, including California, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Texas. Here's a comparison of public and private incarceration rates in California, which has one of the largest private prison populations due to a notorious overcrowding problem:
Christopher Francis Petrella
And here's what it looks like for Mississippi:
Christopher Francis Petrella
In the course of his research, Petrella soon discovered why:
I came to find out that through explicit and implicit exemptions written into contracts between these private prison management companies and state departments of correction, many of these privates ... write exemptions for certain types of prisoners into their contracts ... And, as you can guess, the prisoners they like to house are low-cost prisoners … Those prisoners tend to be younger, and they tend to be much healthier.
The provisions included in private prison contracts do not explicitly mention race but rather reference health and age, allowing prisons to avoid housing prisoners with chronic medical conditions or those with “above average” health care costs.
According to a 2012 report from the ACLU, elderly prisoners today (those over 50 years old) cost prisons $68,270 a year while non-geriatric prisoners cost prisons $34,135 a year.
Based on historical sentencing patterns, says Petrella, prisoners over 50 years old are predominantly white. Those prisoners who are in the 20-40 year-old range are far more likely to be black, Hispanic, or any other minority.
The difference in prison demographics stems from The War On Drugs, which has been criticized as targeting minority communities and imposing draconian mandatory minimum sentences. The majority of over-50 prisoners were incarcerated prior to 1980, when the campaign began, the study notes.
Here's the public versus private comparison for Texas for both minority populations and those over the age of 50. The correlation is striking:
Christopher Francis Petrella
The news that a disproportionate number of minority inmates are in private prisons is potentially disturbing, as for-profit prisons have been accused of cutting corners and abusing prisoners.
Steven Owen, a senior director of public affairs at Corrections Corporation of America (the nation's largest for-profit prison company), had this to say about Petrella's report:
This report is deeply flawed. First, CCA’s government partners determine which inmates are sent to our facilities; our company has no role in their selection. Second, the contracts we have with our government partners are mutually agreed upon, and as the customer, our government partners have significant leverage regarding provisions. For example, most of our contracts provide our government partners wide latitude to cancel contracts quickly if they do not see a need for our services. As part of that contracting process, our partners determine how best to manage their expenditures like health care costs, and we work within their needs and preferences. Finally, under longstanding company policy, CCA does not lobby for or in any way promote legislation or policies that determine the basis or duration of an individual’s incarceration.
Also an interesting read:
The ACLU complete report
A Living Death
Life without Parole for Nonviolent Offenses (Note it's over 200 pages)
https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/111213a-lwop-complete-report.pdf
[h1]Why Minorities Are Even More Overrepresented In Private Prisons[/h1]
Harrison Jacobs
http://www.harrisonjacobs.com
http://twitter.com/@harrisonxjacobs
https://plus.google.com/103812582245310527609?rel=author
Feb. 15, 2014, 9:56 PM
3,015
http://www.businessinsider.com/christopher-petrella-private-prison-study-2014-2#comments
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AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
A new analysis of America's prison demographics has revealed for-profit prisons jail minorities even more disproportionately than publicly operated prisons.
For-profit prisons — like those operated by Corrections Corporation of America — use contractual provisions to target young, healthy (and therefore more profitable) inmates, the study in the journal "Radical Criminology" found. And younger prisoners tend to be minorities, due to drastic changes in prison demographics over the last 30 years, the study noted.
While minorities are disproportionately incarcerated in all prisons in America — The Sentencing Project, a reform advocacy group, puts the number for racial and ethnic minorities as high as 60% of those imprisoned — the percentage of minorities in private prisons is often higher than 60% in some states' private prisons and reaches 89% in California's private prisons, according to the study recently published in the Journal of Radical Criminology by UC: Berkeley doctoral candidate Christopher Petrella.
Petrella's study looked at nine states with large private prison populations, including California, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Texas. Here's a comparison of public and private incarceration rates in California, which has one of the largest private prison populations due to a notorious overcrowding problem:
Christopher Francis Petrella
And here's what it looks like for Mississippi:
Christopher Francis Petrella
In the course of his research, Petrella soon discovered why:
I came to find out that through explicit and implicit exemptions written into contracts between these private prison management companies and state departments of correction, many of these privates ... write exemptions for certain types of prisoners into their contracts ... And, as you can guess, the prisoners they like to house are low-cost prisoners … Those prisoners tend to be younger, and they tend to be much healthier.
The provisions included in private prison contracts do not explicitly mention race but rather reference health and age, allowing prisons to avoid housing prisoners with chronic medical conditions or those with “above average” health care costs.
According to a 2012 report from the ACLU, elderly prisoners today (those over 50 years old) cost prisons $68,270 a year while non-geriatric prisoners cost prisons $34,135 a year.
Based on historical sentencing patterns, says Petrella, prisoners over 50 years old are predominantly white. Those prisoners who are in the 20-40 year-old range are far more likely to be black, Hispanic, or any other minority.
The difference in prison demographics stems from The War On Drugs, which has been criticized as targeting minority communities and imposing draconian mandatory minimum sentences. The majority of over-50 prisoners were incarcerated prior to 1980, when the campaign began, the study notes.
Here's the public versus private comparison for Texas for both minority populations and those over the age of 50. The correlation is striking:
Christopher Francis Petrella
The news that a disproportionate number of minority inmates are in private prisons is potentially disturbing, as for-profit prisons have been accused of cutting corners and abusing prisoners.
Steven Owen, a senior director of public affairs at Corrections Corporation of America (the nation's largest for-profit prison company), had this to say about Petrella's report:
This report is deeply flawed. First, CCA’s government partners determine which inmates are sent to our facilities; our company has no role in their selection. Second, the contracts we have with our government partners are mutually agreed upon, and as the customer, our government partners have significant leverage regarding provisions. For example, most of our contracts provide our government partners wide latitude to cancel contracts quickly if they do not see a need for our services. As part of that contracting process, our partners determine how best to manage their expenditures like health care costs, and we work within their needs and preferences. Finally, under longstanding company policy, CCA does not lobby for or in any way promote legislation or policies that determine the basis or duration of an individual’s incarceration.
Also an interesting read:
The ACLU complete report
A Living Death
Life without Parole for Nonviolent Offenses (Note it's over 200 pages)
https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/111213a-lwop-complete-report.pdf
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am1x90xnike
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Wait what?
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The real reason that blacks are disproportionately locked up over other races is because many blacks incarcerate themselves inside mental prisons.
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The 13th Amendment essentially abolished all slavery and involuntary work EXCEPT when it is used as a form of punishment.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
http://abcnews.go.com/US/man-alleging-prison-labor-violated-anti-slavery-amendment/story?id=16970464
I used to believe this kind of stuff, but then I thought about it and realized something. While black communities may self-inflict much of the harm that goes on within them, the way that black people think (or don't think) actually has very little to do with how we are punished within the system and how our crimes are often met with harsher sentences than those of other ethnicities.
Blacks being trapped in a "mental prison" has very little to do with us actually going to prison, because in spite of a "mental" difference between whites and blacks, we actually commit relatively the same amount of crime.
It doesn't matter if you're a free thinker or a follower. If more police are in your neighborhood more often you are simply more likely to be arrested for something. And, like police in Oakland, New York, Vermont, Minneapolis, Florida...etc have proven time and time before, you don't have to actually be caught doing anything illegal to be put in jail/prison and charged with committing a crime you didn't commit.
At least, if you're poor.
I mean...look at this http://niketalk.com/t/589013/rich-p...-farewell-in-jail-really-murica#post_20258949
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Everyone does a great job highlighting that we have a problem. What is the solution? I feel zero sympathy for convicted felons, so that idea of letting them get public assistance, public housing and public jobs once released to curb a 2nd stay won't fly in my book.
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Here's a great documentary about the for profit prison system & specifically "the war on drugs" here in the US that generates billions of dollars in revenue & helps get a ton of people elected.
The House I Live In Trailer
Some exerts
The House I Live In Trailer
Some exerts
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The solution? Well, its a very touchy subject, and any proposal would be met with some criticism; either by the companies whose profits will dwindle, or the human rights folks who will fight to ensure the morality of whatever our choices are.
I say the biggest part of the problem is the one-size-fits-all mentality we invoke today. Should a person who is sentenced for a gang-related shooting really be housed in the same facility as the guy who was convicted for manslaughter due to a DUI incident? They share similar crimes, but you don't have to have an extensive understanding of criminal law to determine that they are in prison for very different reasons.
I think the crime shouldn't just determine your sentence, but also, where its served. To continue down the path I started before; I think it'd be beneficial to reinvent preexisting facilities that are optimized for certain crime categories. Got a bunch of junkies in a prison with people responsible for drug trafficking? Put them in a secure rehab facility. The dudes who traffic drugs? Keep them away from the people doing their drugs.
Once people are actually in facilities in which the population better reflects their sentencing, I'm sure that alone will take care of some of the issues. But why not take it a step further? Instead of allowing these corporations to funnel money wherever they please (in their pockets,) why not force them to use that money on actually rehabilitating people? There has been a TON of success where law enforcement has actually been preventing people from going to jail by telling them that they have evidence and by changing their life, the criminal can avoid jail time. This example is in Seattle, but programs are being started in Maryland and Pennsylvania as well:
http://www.examiner.com/article/pol...n-to-incarceration-quit-dealing-or-go-to-jail
Granted, that is a preventative program. But, instead of using $100k to force a prisoner to work in a warehouse setting, if we took just 20k of that and allowed them to pursue education, do you think criminals would go back to prison as often as they do? Keep in mind, before it was taken away as an option, education was proven to help keep people out of prison. http://prisonstudiesproject.org/why-prison-education-programs/ (because politicians wanted to be tough on crime, many inmates cannot even get their hands on decent books.)
There's a lot that goes into reform...but I think the way to go is towards preventative programming instead of reactionary sentencing, and facilities that are actually built to rehab people instead of warehousing workers.
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am1x90xnike
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Solution:
end 'war on drugs'
Outlaw private prisons.
Done and done.
end 'war on drugs'
Outlaw private prisons.
Done and done.
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You still have the issues of prisoners being subject to isolation (which is considered touture by the UN), recidivism, drug use within prison, high per capita costs, and overcrowding.
am1x90xnike
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Over 40% of prisoners are in there for non-violent drug offenses, end the war on drugs and you'll instantly end the over crowding issue.
Less prisoners means less overall prisoner because less people use less resources; less food wasted, less clothes replaced, smaller facilities means less utility costs.
Drug use...eh their in prison, that ish sucks. if they can smoke a j or do some coke and not harm anyone, no harm no foul. Punish the assault that results from drug use, not the drug use. Hamsterdam style.
Now, as far as isolation being torture...couldn't care less. You kill or rape someone you deserve whatever comes to you.
As for thieves, seperate prisons, no more time them it costs to replace whatever you stole.
For recidivism, if you paid your debt you shouldn't be required to tell employers, only in those jobs directly related to your offense (ie sex, can't work with kids, theft, can't work at bank, murder w/o mitigating circumstance...u ain't getting out)
Having a functioning prison system isn't difficult, but having one that doesn't trade freedom for profit is where the problem comes in.
Less prisoners means less overall prisoner because less people use less resources; less food wasted, less clothes replaced, smaller facilities means less utility costs.
Drug use...eh their in prison, that ish sucks. if they can smoke a j or do some coke and not harm anyone, no harm no foul. Punish the assault that results from drug use, not the drug use. Hamsterdam style.
Now, as far as isolation being torture...couldn't care less. You kill or rape someone you deserve whatever comes to you.
As for thieves, seperate prisons, no more time them it costs to replace whatever you stole.
For recidivism, if you paid your debt you shouldn't be required to tell employers, only in those jobs directly related to your offense (ie sex, can't work with kids, theft, can't work at bank, murder w/o mitigating circumstance...u ain't getting out)
Having a functioning prison system isn't difficult, but having one that doesn't trade freedom for profit is where the problem comes in.
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Jim Crow 2.0
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Good points
Nereyda Vuelve Por Dios
formerly DONRE
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I dont see how people can not say this a form of slavery where billion are made on the back of these convicts and are given little restitution. these "criminals," mostly minorities, are given more time for the same crimes a white person has committed, its been proven time and time again.
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Oh god here we go again
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They would tell you that these people are chosing to go to jail. So as long as they are chosing to go to jail it can't be slavery.
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Definitely agree with the war on drugs. Just punish those who traffic large amounts, not those who use. I don't think we're ready to legalize anything besides weed and maybe something like LSD for medical purposes.
Don't know about killing people without migitating circumstance. There are grey areas (esp concerning mental health) that would often work against the favor of those who are poor and without access to proper legal counsel and resources.
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I know I'm in the minority, but I think a lot more prisoners should be given the death penalty. And I don't think it should be all humane - it should be a simple low cost blindfold on firing range.
And don't get me wrong, this shouldn't be for simple drug offenders. However, anyone that has committed "serious crimes" (to be defined more clearly) such as cold blooded homicide. I just don't believe we should be wasting the resources of our society one a person that has so clearly chosen to operate outside of it. Something akin to 3 strikes.
Right now there are 2.4 million people in prisons. That's ridiculous. That's like 1 in 100 people in America are in prison. Clearly, people are getting locked up too easily.
My solution: Stop putting people in prison. Off people that cannot change.
Example:
Guy is a big time drug dealer.
Instead of putting him in jail give him house arrest type leg GPS bracelet, with weekly check ins, drug tests, counseling, etc. That way at least the police/authorities know exactly where he is at all times. Make him be on "good behavior" for 3 years.
If he still fails in that time period it's time for the firing squad. Maybe my mentality is stone age..but I'm okay with that. People are given a great opportunity with life - and they get multiple chances at being able to make something out of it. At some point it comes down to the individual, and not to society, to become a responsible member of society. If someone has that gang banger mentality and continues to be harmful to society I see no reason society should support him. Sparta. I am all about people - but I hate that 1 dangerous person affects 1000+ people from living a safe, great life.
And don't get me wrong, this shouldn't be for simple drug offenders. However, anyone that has committed "serious crimes" (to be defined more clearly) such as cold blooded homicide. I just don't believe we should be wasting the resources of our society one a person that has so clearly chosen to operate outside of it. Something akin to 3 strikes.
Right now there are 2.4 million people in prisons. That's ridiculous. That's like 1 in 100 people in America are in prison. Clearly, people are getting locked up too easily.
My solution: Stop putting people in prison. Off people that cannot change.
Example:
Guy is a big time drug dealer.
Instead of putting him in jail give him house arrest type leg GPS bracelet, with weekly check ins, drug tests, counseling, etc. That way at least the police/authorities know exactly where he is at all times. Make him be on "good behavior" for 3 years.
If he still fails in that time period it's time for the firing squad. Maybe my mentality is stone age..but I'm okay with that. People are given a great opportunity with life - and they get multiple chances at being able to make something out of it. At some point it comes down to the individual, and not to society, to become a responsible member of society. If someone has that gang banger mentality and continues to be harmful to society I see no reason society should support him. Sparta. I am all about people - but I hate that 1 dangerous person affects 1000+ people from living a safe, great life.
heatpinoyboy
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Was thinking the same and I was glad to see this when I scrolled down; this, the school-to-prison pipeline and other messed up processes (including how private prisons build cells based on the states reading comprehension of early elementary students) exist. The video barely scratched the ****** up surface
am1x90xnike
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So much privilege tucked away in this statement.
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was just going to say that...
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Modern Darwin I agree w your statement totally like rapist, sex offenders, and pedophilia should be given a shorter sentence that a drug offender but those kinds of animals get released and do it again kill em
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