Case study

Case study 9

Step1. The first step of understanding mass incarceration is to actually accept the fact that it exists; as well as understand the scope in which we compare to other nations in the world.

As Pettus-Davis 2015 explains, while the United States is only five percent of the world’s population, we have twenty-five percent of the world’s incarcerated population. This means that we are the leading group in the world of incarceration. There are many issues towards this problem, but it was clearly stated by Pettus-Davis 2015 when it was mentioned that incarcerating someone in the United States for their wrong-doing has become the default. This means that regardless of what someone does, as long as it illegal they will be thrown in jail. This is the first part that seems really unfair in the situation. If someone is doing something like hunting to get food for their family but they don’t have a license; they could technically be thrown in jail for hunting without a license. When in reality the person was most likely poor and needed to feed the family that they wanted to support. While this isn’t necessarily a specific situation; it’s a clear example of how one of these instances could play out with the incarceration default.

Because of this default, it becomes a constant event in societies. So much so that when people fall upon the hard parts of life; they are tasked with situations that cause them to be incarcerated when they never thought would have happened before. In fact, in the United States, it was found that over one half of the people arrest were in poverty at least a year before as per Pettus-David (2015) pg.4. This means that being poor is criminalized because incarcerating people has become the norm in the United States.

Instead of offering people help when they are falling upon hard times, they are met with the default incarceration and the government ends up spending more money to keep these people in cages rather than the less expensive assistance they may have needed out in the free world.

If governments took money that is poured into these types of incarceration methods, they would find much more positive results in the community. Schrantz, 2012 PG. 18 explains that in the state of Connecticut, there were massive amounts of money poured into preventing recidivism within inmates. This resulted in almost a 50% reduction in the overall population. This money was spent on rehabilitation and rehab that prisoners really needed to make themselves a functioning member of society.

My thoughts overall to reduce the reliance on incarceration would be to rely more on restorative systems. While putting someone in jail does restore the community temporarily by making it safer with a less criminal population; these people eventually do get back out and have to enter the community they disturbed once again. But there is also the fact that some people are going to jail for such long amounts of time that it’s proportionally unfair and it really seems to be a severe level of over punishment.

For example, kids should not be taken to jail or get things put on their record because they made bad decisions with drugs when they were young. While it may be good to send them to a program in which they can learn the negative effects of drugs, there’s no need to jail them and introduce that community at an early age. There is also no need to jail parents who have slipped up and committed crimes. There should be rehabilitative systems to teach parents how to function in society so that they don’t end up in jail and their kids don’t end up in the foster system which overall spends more government money.

Answer the Questions by your own words.? Your answer 300 words.

Question 1: Would it be wrong to punish white people more severely for engaging in an illegal activity they had the advantage to avoid?

Question 2: Should violent offenders be able to avoid jail if they are going to rehab?

Note; Avoid PLAGIARISM and copying and pasting you will get you ZERO. I will scan the papers.

Review and write according the instructions.

Look at my attachment.