Since 2002, the United States has been the world’s largest jailer. Its steep incarceration rates, however, do not reflect safer streets but rather reveal the disillusionment surrounding punishing demographically vulnerable individuals for systemic concerns. At a macro level, the US prison population contains a disproportionate number of poor people and minorities, failing to exact an equal hand on all, regardless of class and race. As momentum for the cause grows, what is the role of the US in ending mass incarceration?
Introduction
Incarceration is just as ugly as it sounds. A messy, inaccurate way of judging infractions with no standardized measure of justice. At a surface level, incarceration is society’s primary tool for upholding law and order by punishing those who commit crimes. However, the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery in the US, left a few doors open to forced labor. It declares that no one can be held involuntarily “except as a punishment for a crime”, and this has shaped our prison systems from the ground up. Creating an institution that can be routinely compromised with enough money and privilege does not indicate a system of fairness and safety, but rather one molded by power dynamics. Moreover, the Sentencing Project reports that, as of 2019, nearly one in five people in prison had already served a minimum of 10 years in prison beforehand. This revolving door of convictions highlights the system’s failure to prioritize rehabilitation, keeping thousands trapped in its cycle. The impacts of this phenomenon bleed into communities, leaving families destabilized for long periods of time and furthering the pattern of poverty. Bluntly, the societal damage is clear. Incarceration often fails to serve the greater good.
The Origin of Mass Incarceration
But how did we get here? The escalation of mass detentions can be dated back to the “tough-on-crime” era bolstered by former Presidents Nixon and Reagan. On June 17, 1971, President Richard Nixon officially declared drug abuse “public enemy number one”, launching the so-called War on Drugs. This was so much more than a metaphorical stance—it was the beginning of an all-out offensive charge, complete with drug prohibition, the creation of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1973, and mass detentions for non-violent drug offenses.
The Reagan administration followed suit. They expanded punitive policies in the 1980s, and the casualties of this conflict were even worse because of it. Black Americans saw a 100-to-1 disparity in sentencing for crack versus powder cocaine, with possession of just five grams of crack cocaine—a substance “more commonly found” in Black communities—resulting in the same minimum sentence as five hundred grams of powder cocaine, often dubbed as the “wealthy, white man’s drug”. Factoring in the racial rhetoric cloaking the two substances, the federal reaction is entirely unsurprising.
If criminalizing Black Americans was the goal, this country has been overachieving for quite some time. By 1988, Congress had allocated hundreds of millions of dollars for prisons and law enforcement and made crack the only drug for which possession was a federal crime. The result was a prison system filled predominantly with Black and Brown individuals convicted for low-level, non-violent drug offenses.
Harsh Sentencing Laws
Hand-in-hand with increased arrests was the implementation of harsh sentencing laws. Judicial discretion was locked away with mandatory minimum sentences. The Brennan Center for Justice underscores the difference between the original purpose for this law, promoting uniformity and fairness by letting the law alone decide what sentence you receive, and its regrettable implications, tying judges’ hands and giving power to the prosecutors to threaten crimes alloted mandatory minimums. This is an immensely powerful coercion method sometimes causing defendants to plead guilty, even when innocent. Moreover, federal judges themselves have come to dislike mandatory minimums, as they are often applied to nonviolent drug offenders who pose the least physical threat to communities.
Sentencing patterns such as this were only exacerbated with the introduction of the “Three Strikes” law, also known as “Three Strikes and You’re Out.” Beginning in California in 1994, the law mandated life sentences for individuals convicted of three serious crimes. President Bill Clinton followed soon after, signing it into federal law. Since then, “Three Strikes” has been heavily criticized as a leading cause for swelling prison populations.
The Real Cost
Societal reentry for inmates continues to pose challenges regarding housing, employment, and even medical care. These compounded difficulties have resulted in increased recidivism, health problems, and mortality. Our current process fails to accommodate for things such as mental illness, one of many distinguishing factors for an inmate’s ability to reestablish themselves as contributors to their communities. In addition, the cavernous wealth gap among White and Black counterparts is seen, more than anywhere else, in the criminal justice system. This nation’s 400-year history of perpetuating racial injustice lives on in the aftermath of our incarceration agenda. The decades of over-policing communities of color has now left stains on their ability to return to society productively. Namely, Black and Latino Americans suffer reduced earning potential, which is a defining factor in the difference between financial stability and persistent poverty. While all people who have been to prison face harshly reduced earnings, the Brennan Center quantifies that Black and Latino Americans are less likely than White people of the exact same socioeconomic group to see their earnings recover, staunchly suggesting that the prison system traps them in low wage jobs. Further, the cycle of poverty circles back to each inmate, continuing to ravage communities already sitting on fault lines. Simply, this is a crisis America cannot afford to ignore.
Crime or Criminalization?
We must now ask ourselves whether mass incarceration is the solution or a suit of false security. To truly begin building for better, the US has to start entertaining alternatives to mass incarceration—ones that aim to rehabilitate and heal rather than functioning like a conveyor belt, mechanically moving people through a cycle of punishment.
Policy initiatives can start with advocating for exchanging prison time for drug treatment, probation, or community service for low-level offenders. Expanding drug courts is one of the best intensive judicial programs to help offenders break the cycle of substance abuse and crime. Stanford University provides key policy evidence to underscore how punishment alone is ineffective. Those who followed with a community-based program were seven times more likely to be drug free and three times less likely to be rearrested for criminal behavior than those not pursuing treatment. The current issue is limiting those in drug courts to the least serious offenders when research points to drug courts having the most comprehensive supervision.
Or, perhaps the US could follow in Norway’s footsteps, a country that prioritizes rehabilitation practices. Its programs include measures such as work, education, social welfare services, and discussion groups, which all initiate the process of turning criminals into what they call good neighbors. Norway’s hope is to produce a person who, once his or her sentence is served, has a suitable place to live and can relate to society at large. And it’s working. Norway’s recidivism rate is twenty percent, while in America, close to seventy percent of its incarcerated population will reoffend.
Regardless of the approach the US chooses, the time has come to stop accepting routine punishment. Mass incarceration reduces the stories of thousands into an orange jumpsuit and serial number. The truth is rarely ever so simple.
Written by: Anushka Singh Edited By: Ellie Meyer