The United States has the largest prison population in the world. Despite being a developed country with countless resources to help the process of rehabilitation, the United States has created a policy of incarcerating people for crimes that many people find to be a problem of our society and not individuals. The war on drugs has been a prime example of this. The US has created a system where non-violent drug offenders can be sentenced to prison for a long time, despite having problems with addiction or mental illness. The problem is that many of the prisons in the United States are private, and designed to make money. When there is such an incentive to have people locked up in order to make money, people who otherwise would not be put in prison, are incarcerated for low-level offenses. This has created a system where people that grow up in low income neighborhoods, that are surrounded by drugs a violence, are extremely susceptible to being put in prison, simply because of the situation that they were born into. We know that people of color are much more likely to be incarcerated for the exact same crimes committed by white people, and this has created and even greater divide in our country. This for-profit prison system has been one of the main contributors to the racial divide that we have seen in our country.
Works Cited:
https://fordlawokc.com/whats-the-deal-with-private-prisons/
this is why the school-to-prison pipeline should be talked about more. So many non-violent juvenile crimes have to do with drug possession. this leads to the school-to-prison pipeline. It is creating a cycle of incarceration.
I agree Ben. This is a topic that is often overlooked. I also agree with your statement about non violent drug offenders. There should be a way that these people to serve their punishments without causing them mental and physical stress. I also liked the chart that you showed. The visual is definitely more powerful that a series of numbers
Hey Ben, this is a really good and detailed comment. I’m glad that you’re bringing attention to something that can be so overlooked. This is relevant to sustainability in so many ways, especially when you look into the amount of energy it takes to run these facilities, along with how much uncompensated labor is utilized in these facilities.
This is a good topic to bring up, US prisons are packed. What is worth a long prison sentence should be questioned. So many people are arrested for lower-level crimes. The United States also has the largest prison population globally by almost 400,000 people.