Regardless which side of the political compass a person lies, Americans agree that too many individuals are imprisoned in the United States. In fact, the United States holds about 5% of the world population, but nearly 25% of the prison population (Ye Hee Lee 2015). The advent of dog-whistle politics combined with implicit racial bias has allowed for casual observers and social scientists alike to notice how minorities disproportionately make up the composition of prisons since the 1970s. While no single policy exists that can fix this "New Jim Crow," getting rid of private prisons offers the easiest first step toward mending contemporary racism. Simply put, policy that eradicates private prisons in the United States proves practical as they …show more content…
Their lobby spends money on direct lobbying to candidates, campaign contributions, and in assisting in drafting legislation. The result of these efforts has led to laws such as the three-strike rule in California, anti-illegal immigration legislation, and increased immigration enforcement (Cohen 2015). These policies are inherently malicious and most harmful to minorities while attempting to keep as many people in prison as possible in a bid to generate more revenue to keep their shareholders happy. As such, the elimination of private prisons would effectively destroy their lobby, removing their influence over legislation that feeds off racial …show more content…
It also means cutting expenditures as much as possible. To achieve this goal, private prisons attempt to cut the cost of each inmate in three self-reinforcing ways. The first requires taking in low-cost inmates. As a result, this protocol means that private prisons are disproportionately composed of young male minorities, the exact demographic the War on Drugs has targeted. This group allows for cheaper housing because they are significantly less likely to require costly medical services. Coupled with a lower-paid prison staff and less spending on educational programs, violence in private prisons is higher compared to public ones (Quandt 2014). Because of increased violence and fewer programs that help young minorities integrate back into society, a higher recidivism rate exists in private prisons. Hence, a transition back to public prisons that better emphasize programs useful towards younger convicts will keep more out of prison longer, strengthening communities and reducing the incredibly disproportionate number of racial minorities in the United States. Of course, no matter how good the policy, meaningful change only comes through public outcry to pressure their representatives in prioritizing the elimination of private prisons. To exterminate private prisons, the communication of the policy needs to be framed in a way that galvanizes the public to change their opinions on prisoners. Namely,
Multiple human rights organizations, as well as political and social organizations, are condemning what they are calling a “new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States,” where a prison population of up to 2 million – mostly Black and Hispanic are working for various industries for a subsistence wage (Pelaez, 2008). For the businesspersons who have invested in the prison industry, however, it has been like finding a ‘pot of gold.’ All of their workers are fulltime, and never arrive late or are absent. Moreover, if they don’t like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation
In today's society more and more violence is occurring each and everyday. With the increase of violence, the inmate population grows and locations of incarcerating inmates are rising as well. In his article, Private prisons, career correctional administrator and academic, Richard P. Seiter argues that the private corrections care about the well being of inmate not about making profit off the enormous populus incarcerated. Richard P. Seiter is a career Correctional Administrator. Mr. Seiter served as a Warden at two federal prisons, Federal Prison Camp in Allenwood, Pennsylvania from 1981 to 1982 and Federal Correctional Institution in Greenville Illinois from 1993 to 1999..
This falls into the ethical issues because it makes it seem as though when someone enters a private prison, the odds are much likelier that they’ll have a longer stay than a public one. Time is something one can never get back, and private prisons are purposely wasting inmates’ lives just for financial gain (Pelaez). Prison privatization may also have affected sentencing. Prison privatization was supposed to be a solution to mass incarceration, not promote it. However, since privatization, three strike laws have been enacted.
Over the last thirty years, the prison population in the United States has increased more than seven-fold to over two million people, including vastly disproportionate numbers of minorities and people with little education. For some racial and educational groups, incarceration has become a depressingly regular experience, and prison culture and influence pervade their communities. Almost 60 percent of black male high school drop-outs in their early thirties have spent time in prison. In Punishment and Inequality in America, sociologist Bruce Western explores the recent era of mass incarceration and the serious social and economic consequences it has wrought.
In her article “The New Jim Crow,” Michelle Alexander powerfully argues that the American prison system has become a redesigned form of disenfranchisement of poor people of color and compares it to the racially motivated Jim Crow laws. She supports her assertions through her experiences as a civil rights lawyer, statistical facts about mass incarceration, and by comparing the continued existence of racial discrimination in America today to the segregation and discrimination during the Jim Crow laws. Alexander’s purpose is to reveal the similarities of the discriminatory and segregating Jim Crow laws to the massive influx of incarceration of poor people of color in order to expose that racism evolves to exist in disguised, yet acceptable forms
(2015, April 28). How for-profit prisons have become the biggest lobby no one is talking about. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how-for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/ Fisher, J (2015, May 27). The Michael Marin Poison Pill Case.
Prison reform has been an ongoing topic in the history of America, and has gone through many changes in America's past. Mixed feelings have been persevered on the status of implementing these prison reform programs, with little getting done, and whether it is the right thing to do to help those who have committed a crime. Many criminal justice experts have viewed imprisonment as a way to improve oneself and maintain that people in prison come out changed for the better (encyclopedia.com, 2007). In the colonial days, American prisons were utilized to brutally punish individuals, creating a gruesome experience for the prisoners in an attempt to make them rectify their behavior and fear a return to prison (encyclopedia.com, 2007). This practice may have worked 200 years ago, but as the world has grown more complex, time has proven that fear alone does not prevent recidivism.
Private prisons have been increasing more and more over the decade and this is due to the fact that private prisons are handed to a third party to handle and manage thus causing the government to worry about one less thing on their agenda. Not only have private prisons been increasing because it is one less thing for the government to worry about but also because the it benefits the government with more cost-efficient prisons. To further elaborate on the above statement, private prisons are run by third parties and due to this it leads to a reduced cost because when it is run by third parties, third parties do not have to follow the same rules a government prison would. For example, private prisons can pay much less for security than a government
One of the major steps toward changing the justice system is to ban private prison because people are benefiting from
People of all different races and ethnicities are locked behind bars because they have been convicted of committing a crime and they are paying for the consequences. When looking at the racial composition of a prison in the United States, it does not mimic the population. This is because some races and ethnicities are over represented in the correctional system in the U.S. (Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 2018). According Walker et al. (2018), African-Americans/Blacks make up less than fifteen percent of the U.S. population, while this race has around thirty-seven percent of the population in the correctional system today.
“The prison population has increased from 300,000 people in the early 1970s to 2.3 million people today. There are nearly six million people on probation or on parole. One in every fifteen-people born in the United States in 2001 is expected to go to jail or prison; one in every three black male babies born in this century is expected to be incarcerated” (Stevenson 15). For our society to function, we need to fix areas that are broken. One is the perception and treatment of African Americans.
The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for several reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. This literature review will discuss the ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system and how mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism has become a problem.
This preconceived notion could not be farther from the truth. In reality, these reform movements are idiotically placing a bandaid over the tremendous issue that the prison system is. An imbalance of reforms between women and men, unrestrained sexual abuse in women’s prisons, and tyrannical gender roles are just three of countless examples of how prison reform movements only create more misfortune and fail to provide any real solution to worsening prison conditions. Perhaps instead of conjuring up additional ideas on how to reform prisons, America’s so-called democratic society should agree upon abolishing prisons as a whole. This being said, it is crucial to identify ongoing issues in today’s society, understand how they contribute to unlawful behavior, and seek a solution.
Over 2 million people are currently being held in United States prisons, and while the U.S. may only hold 5% of the world’s population, it houses 25% of its prisoners. In the past few years, America’s prison system has fallen under public scrutiny for it’s rising incarceration rate and poor statistics. Many Americans have recently taken notice of the country’s disproportionate prisoner ratio, realized it’s the worst on the planet, and called for the immediate reformation of the failing system. The war on drugs and racial profiling are some of the largest concerns, and many people, some ordinary citizens and others important government figures, are attempting to bring change to one of the country 's lowest aspects.
The privatization has a much more positive connotation due to its relationship with capitalism, yet thus far prison privatization has been a spectacular flavor but with considerable reform will be successful. While capitalism may be good for business, it does not appear to be a good fit for prisons. Many past studies and crimes against humanity have shown that the best-proven method to keeping a large number of people in order and under the control of their authority is by dehumanizing and using significant force as seen in the Stanford prison experiment. If private prisons were to employ such methods, it would decrease the number of guards necessary, but would certainly violate the rights of the inmates. Statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) state that private institutes employ 33% fewer correctional officers