High rates of incarceration in the United States and the great number of people held in jails and prisons result substantially from decisions by policy makers to increase the use and severity of prison sentences. Prison growth has been fueled by tough drug enforcement, strict sentencing laws and high rates of recidivism, the re-arrest, reconviction, or re-incarceration of an ex-offender. The first prison in the United States was built in 1790, but according to Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow, “in less than thirty years from 2010, the U.S. penal population exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2 million, with drug convictions accounting for the majority of the increase.” The War on Drugs, unfair trials/wrongful convictions, inability to make bail, harsh punishments on minor offenses, and racial inequality are the main factors that contributed to the growing of the prison populations and overuse of imprisonment in the United States.
The War on Drugs was declared by President Richard Nixon in 1971 with the objective to eradicate illicit drug use in the United States. Laws passed in the early 20th century such as the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914, and the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, attempted to restrict drug production and sales. Although during this time period, racial tensions were particularly high so as a result, the War on Drugs has hit minority communities the hardest. One of Nixon’s advisers, John Ehrlichman claimed that “the Nixon White House had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people.” He said “we knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war and black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily.”
In 1986, Reagan also passed the “Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986” that allocated funds to new prisons, drug education, and treatment. Although the main result was to create mandatory minimum sentences which required the offenders to serve a predefined term for certain crimes, commonly serious and violent offenses. For example, African Americans were harshly sentenced for the use of heroin. Then in 1994, President Clinton passed the “Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994”. This act allocated more money for prisons as well as issued harsher sentences, including the “three- strikes law”. The three-strikes law required a person guilty of committing both a severe violent felony and two other previous convictions to serve a mandatory life sentence in prison. Finally, the “Truth in Sentencing Law.” This law was enacted to reduce the possibility of early release from incarceration. It requires offenders to serve 85% of their prison sentence before qualified for release. This gave the opportunity to receive federal funding for prisons.
The result of those laws that were enacted was a massive growth in the prison population. As more strict and harsher laws are enacted, the incarceration rate grows insanely because offenders are getting harsher punishments on minor offenses and are forced to do almost all of their time before they are qualified for release. Another issue that leads to the growth of the prison population is the inability to get bail. Millions of misdemeanor or minor offense cases disproportionately affect the lives of people of color, especially the poor. A public defender from Bronx, New York stated in Slate, “I regularly saw clients languish at Rikers Island simply because they couldn’t afford to buy their way out. These were not people who had been convicted and were serving sentences: they were just poor clients sitting in their jail cells waiting for their chance to fight their cases…once in jail, people are faced with a terrible choice: Plead guilty and go home saddled with a criminal record, or maintain innocence and remain in jail. Spend a night or two at a place like Rikers Island and you’ll understand why almost everyone opts to just plead and go home.” In other words, the poor aren’t able to pay up in order to get released and wait for trial in the comfort of their homes, so they get tossed into the system not even convicted yet, simply just waiting for their trial. But they don’t have much of a choice because if they plead guilty they automatically are branded as “felons or criminals” or they have to spend their lives in jail even though they are innocent. It’s a lose – lose situation. Which leads me to the issue of unfair trials and the Central Park Five and Kaleif Browder cases.
As a society, we want to believe that the United States courts and criminal justice system serves justice fairly and equally as it should be. Then, we have cases such as the Central Park Five and the Kaleif Browder case, and it is hard to believe that. On April 19, 1989, five black and Latino teenagers were accused, arrested, and charged with brutally attacking and raping a white female jogger in Central Park, New York. Donald Trump spent $85,000 placing full-page ads in daily papers, calling for the return of the death penalty. He said “the police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that the case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same.” The teens were interrogated into saying that they were guilty of the rape even though there was no evidence found to connect the five teens to the case. The actions that Trump took to publically attack the five young teens made the rest of society believe that they were guilty. They were sentenced to 5-10 and 5-15 years, and served between 6 to 13 years in prison, before the man who really committed the rape of Trisha Meili confessed and actual DNA evidence was found. The Central Park Five sued New York City after the charges were dropped and they ended up winning $41 million in settlement. Although, they would forever be looked as criminals and rapists, especially because Trump never apologized for his wrongdoing.
Their case is significant because as young teens their rights were violated because one, their parents weren’t present during questioning and two, they were forced and interrogated to plead guilty. So, they are a prime example of those people that go to jail by pleading guilty even though they know they were innocent. Unfortunately, these teens didn’t know better to just keep quiet but I wouldn’t imagine the outcome being any different, as they were young black and Latino teens.
Another significant case relating to unfair trials is the Kalief Browder case. Kaleif Browder spent three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime. According to The New Yorker, he was arrested in 2010 at the age of 16, for a robbery that he insisted he didn’t commit. He spent more than one thousand days for a trial that never happened. He spent two years in solitary confinement in which he tried to commit suicide several times. When he was released in November 2013, he attempted suicide again, this time it was in his house. He was taken to a psychiatric ward in Bronx. People tried to reach out to Kaleif and help him get his life back together. For example, he got an anonymous donor to pay for his tuition at the community college he was attending. Also, people such as Rand Paul, Jay Z, and Rosie O’Donnell found interest in his story and met up with him. Kalief unfortunately ended up committing suicide in his house, after one night telling his mom he “couldn’t take it anymore” and his mom told him “Kaleif you’ve got a lot of people in your corner.” Due to the experience that he had while serving time in Rikers Island and in solitary confinement turned him psychotic. Unfortunately, it isn’t a shocking theory to believe that would be the outcome because the years that he was serving the time he knew he was innocent and he didn’t even have a trial. He was told that if he pleads guilty he will do less time but he didn’t because he knew he did not commit the crime. Maybe if he plead guilty the situation would be different but Kaleif was very strong for not taking that path because either way people would see him as a criminal. Cases like these are so common which is sick because a person’s life is thrown away for something that they didn’t do and are forced to say that they did and then they get thrown into the system.
Today’s prison population is a mixture of offenders that committed minor offenses, and people either awaiting trial or are too poor to pay for bail. Also in the mixture is a high rate of recidivism. The reason why recidivism is also a part of the growing prison population is because in the Sentencing Project, it explains that “incarceration is particularly ineffective at reducing certain kinds of crimes: in particular, youth crimes, many of which are committed in groups, and drug crimes. When people get locked up for these offenses, they are easily replaced on the streets by others seeking income or struggling with addiction.” Once you are submitted in the criminal justice system you are branded as a “criminal” no matter whether or not you committed a crime and life after jail is hard. The Department of Justice states that “Every year, more than half a million inmates are released from prison. Nearly two thirds of those who are released will be arrested again within three years.” Some of the most common problems facing former inmates are the difficulty of finding stable housing; inadequate access to drug and alcohol treatment; and lack of job training. When you are applying for a job or for a house or some type of property you are required to say whether you have committed any felony’s in a specific period of time such as in the past ten years. Not only are you denied from housing, jobs, voting, and many public activities, but it is also hard for an ex-offender to adapt into society. It is difficult to navigate around a society that you have been secluded from for many years since you are used to the prison life. You are more comfortable in being in prison rather than being “free” in society which explains why two thirds of those that are released are later arrested and put into the system all over again. The reason why “free” is in quotations is because once a criminal is released from prison into the world, they aren’t really free because of the difficulty of starting a new life they have to face, and if they are denied from almost every right then they have nothing to look forward to.
According to Stop the Crime, “prisons have four major purposes: retribution, incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation.” “Retribution means punishment for crimes against society. Incapacitation refers to the removal of criminals from society so that they can no longer harm innocent people. Deterrence means the prevention of future crime, and hope that prisons provide warnings to people thinking about committing crimes and that the possibility of going to prison will discourage people from breaking. Finally, rehabilitation, Rehab refers to activities designed to change criminals to law abiding citizens and may include providing educational courses in prison, teaching job skills and offering counselling with a psychological or social worker.” When we think of prisons we think of a place where criminals or “bad people” are placed into for committing crimes against the society. So as citizens we should believe that prisons are supposed to be a good place for bad people in order to punish them or help them learn from their mistakes by doing time and “in-house” activities such as educational courses to help change their views. The Prison Policy provides information on how many people are in jail and the crimes that are committed. A 2017 pie chart provides a snapshot of our correctional system, according to the chart, 70 % of people in local jails are not convicted of any crime. Out of the total population in local jails which is 630,000, 443,000 have not been convicted of any crimes and only 187,000 have been convicted. In conclusion, the War on Drugs, unfair trials/wrongful convictions, inability to make bail, harsh punishments on minor offenses, and racial inequality have all influenced the growing population of prisons in the United States, and stretch the limit of the purpose of prisons in our society. If a system such as our criminal justice system doesn’t fulfill its ultimate job then there is absolutely no purpose for it.