Incarceration American-Style

In the United States today, incarceration is more than just a mode of criminal punishment. It is a distinct cultural practice with its own aesthetic and technique, a practice that has emerged in recent decades as a catch-all mechanism for managing social ills. In this essay, I argue that this emergent carceral system has become self-generating—that American-style incarceration, through the conditions it inflicts, produces the very conduct society claims to abhor and thereby guarantees a steady supply of offenders whose incarceration the public will continue to demand. I argue, moreover, that this reproductive process works to create a class of permanently marginalized and degraded noncitizens—disproportionately poor people of color—who are marked out by the fact of their incarceration for perpetual social exclusion and ongoing social control. This essay serves as the Foreword to a symposium in the Harvard Law & Policy Review addressing the costs of mass incarceration

The New Jim Crow

The mass incarceration of poor people of color represents a new American caste system that is the moral equivalent of Jim Crow. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. The War on Drugs and the "get tough" movement explain the explosion in incarceration in the United States and the emergence of a vast, new racial undercaste in which the overwhelming majority of the increase in imprisonment has been poor people of color, with the most astonishing rates of incarceration found among black men

The High Cost of Wisconsin's Dropout Rate

Outlines the scope of the high school dropout problem in Wisconsin and dropouts' risk of unemployment, health problems, and incarceration. Estimates costs to the state through reduced tax revenues, increased Medicaid costs, and high incarceration rates

Ten Economic Facts About Crime and Incarceration in the United States

Crime and high rates of incarceration impose tremendous costs on society, with lasting negative effects on individuals, families, and communities. Rates of crime in the United States have been falling steadily, but still constitute a serious economic and social challenge. At the same time, the incarceration rate in the United States is so high -- more than 700 out of every 100,000 people are incarcerated -- that both crime scholars and policymakers alike question whether, for nonviolent criminals in particular, the social costs of incarceration exceed the social benefits

Immigration and African-American Employment Opportunities: The Response of Wages, Employment, and Incarceration to Labor Supply Shocks

The employment rate of black men, and particularly of low-skill black men, fell precipitously from 1960 to 2000. At the same time, the incarceration rate of black men rose markedly. This paper examines the relation between immigration and these trends in black employment and incarceration. Using data drawn from the 1960-2000 U.S. Censuses, we find a strong correlation between immigration, black wages, black employment rates, and black incarceration rates. As immigrants disproportionately increased the supply of workers in a particular skill group, the wage of black workers in that group fell, the employment rate declined, and the incarceration rate rose. Our analysis suggests that a 10-percent immigrant-induced increase in the supply of a particular skill group reduced the black wage by 4.0 percent, lowered the employment rate of black men by 3.5 percentage points, and increased the incarceration rate of blacks by almost a full percentage point.

Human Cattle: Prison Overpopulation and the Political Economy of Mass Incarceration

This paper examines the costs and impacts of prison overpopulation and mass incarceration on individuals, families, communities, and society as a whole. We start with an overview of the American prison system and the costs of maintaining it today, and move on to an account of the historical background of the prison system to provide context for the discussions later in this paper. This paper proceeds to go into more detail about the financial and social costs of mass incarceration, concluding that the costs of the prison system outweigh its benefits. This paper will then discuss the stigma and stereotypes associated with prison inmates that are formed and spread through mass media. The stigma and stereotypes propagated by the media result in a negative social construction of prison inmates, contributing to a culture of incarceration that makes it difficult to end America’s dependence on prisons. The final section of the paper discusses the challenges that come with changing the culture of incarceration, which include the deep entrenchment of said culture and the self-perpetuating nature of many of the problems associated with prison, and offers possible alternatives and solutions to incarceration and the problems associated with it

The Racial Oppression in America’s Mass Incarceration

This paper seeks to expose the racial oppression embedded within the United States\u27 practice of mass incarceration and will provide recommendations to ameliorate this discriminatory practice that harshly and inequitably impacts people of color. Many minority communities are stuck in a continuous cycle of poverty and incarceration, in part because they are targeted and oppressed by the criminal justice system more frequently than middle class white communities. Consequently, incarcerated people of color exhibit high rates of recidivism because of being stripped of resources and being sent back to impoverished, drug-ridden neighborhoods. The War on Drugs in the 1980s and the continuance of poor relations between law enforcement and minority communities are significant contributing factors that have led to the mass incarceration of racial minority groups. The economic, political, and societal oppression of minority communities that unquestionably contributes to mass incarceration will be highlighted throughout this paper. Creating policies that involve transforming the U.S. legal system and providing communal support will be crucial in eradicating this systemic racial oppression

Exposure to criminal environment and criminal social identity in a sample of adult prisoners: The moderating role of psychopathic traits

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of period of incarceration, criminal friend index (a retrospective measure intended to quantify criminal associations before first incarceration), and four psychopathy factors (interpersonal manipulation, callous affect, erratic lifestyle, and antisocial behavior) in criminal social identity (CSI) while controlling for age and gender. Participants were a sample of 501 incarcerated offenders (males n = 293; females n = 208) from three prisons located in Pennsylvania Sate. Moderated regression analyses indicated no significant direct association between period of incarceration and CSI or between criminal friend index and CSI. However, a significant moderating effect of interpersonal manipulation on the relationship between period of incarceration and CSI was observed. Period of incarceration was significantly positively correlated with CSI (particularly with in-group ties subscale) only for those offenders who scored high (1 SD above the mean) on interpersonal manipulation and significantly negatively correlated for those who scored low (1 SD below the mean) on interpersonal manipulation. Also, criminal friend index was positively significantly associated with in-group ties for high levels (1 SD above the mean) of callous affect. The main findings provide evidence for the claim that prisoners are likely to simulate changes in identity through the formation of bonds with other offenders and that this can be achieved using interpersonal manipulation skills