Research Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 2

Research Paper - Essay Example Rate of Incarceration The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population, but incarcerate roughly a quarter of all the prisoners in the world. According to a report released by the Bureau of Prison Statistics, one out of every 32 adults in the United States was in prison, in jail, on probation, or on parole at the end of 2005. In fact, imprisonment has become the immediate response to far too many of the social problems that burden people who are ensconced in poverty. These problems often are veiled by being conveniently grouped together under the category "crime" and by the automatic attribution of criminal behavior to people of color. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages. This system cannot last much longer, it’s stretched to the breaking point. There are too many prisoners for the system to be sustained. The only results are more violence, riots, racism. The system is failing because it was not designed to succeed. The criminal justice system disproportionately occupies people of color in the United States (Abramsky, 2008). According to Angela Davis, â€Å"Almost two million people are currently locked up in the immense network of U.S. prisons and jails. More than 70 percent of the imprisoned population are people of color. It is rarely acknowledged that the fastest growing group of prisoners is black women and that Native American prisoners are the largest group per capita.† We can see the impact socioeconomically by examining information from the Department of Justice itself, Irwin and Austin report that "Between 1980 and 1995, the prison population ballooned from 329,821 to 1,104,074--a rise of 235%" (Irwin & Austin, p.1). Zimring and Hawkins write "Never before has a prison system grown by so much in so short a time during a period of political and social stab ility" (Zimring & Hawkins, 1994 p.83). The incarceration rate in the U.S. increased from 138 per 100,000 in 1980 to 403 in 1995. "We now imprison at a higher rate than any other nation in the world, having recently surpassed South Africa" (Irwin & Austin, p.1). What we clearly see here is that mass imprisonment in local communities is continuing to grow faster and faster over time. The impact of this is astonishing when you consider the amount of individuals and families of non-caucasian decent who are harmed psychologically and physically because of a system clearly designed for the purpose of turning profit under the guise of helping the population. There are now about 1.5 million children in the U.S. who have a parent in prison. According to a report by Marc Mauer, â€Å"African American children, 1 of every 14 has a parent behind bars on any given day. Over the course of a year or an individual’s childhood, the figures would obviously be much greater. For these children, the experience of shame, stigma, and loss of financial and psychological support becomes a profound aspect of their life experience. The effect on these communities is compounded by the fact that imprisonment has become an almost inevitable aspect of the experience of growing up as a black male in the U.S. Government figures now show that a black male born today has a one in three chance of spending at least a year in prison at some point in his life. Thus,