We hear the word Mass Incarceration thrown around the news all the time, but what does it really mean, and is it actually effecting certain communities populations? Mass incarceration was never really a major thing until the 1980’s when Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs. This began a trend of numerous amounts of people being arrested for non-violent crimes. This would take the jail population from half of a million to two million, and of these two million the majority are people of color. The simple fact that a man charged with 100 grams of cocaine will be charged the same in a court as a man with 10 grams of crack cocaine is irrational. Mainly because white males purchase powder cocaine rather than crack cocaine because they can afford it simply states that doing drugs is fine as long as you fit a demographic. Out of every 100,000 Americans about 700 of them are incarcerated, but of 100,000 black men about 4,000 of them are incarcerated (Amnesty International USA. 2016). If trends like this continue soon every 1 in 5 black male will be incarcerated.
The jail system was created with intentions to make law-abiding citizens out of actual criminals, rather now instead it is used to systematically oppress minorities. Not to mention once they release these individuals from jail, not only are they worse off then when they went to jail, they tend to have nowhere to go and no one will hire them due to their criminal background. The jail population has gotten so out of hand many jails cut funding in order to support the building. This results in canceling of essential programs for the betterment of the prisoners such as counseling, and rehabilitation. We are living in a world where people are aware of the injustices that minorities face, but the only way to overcome this is to become involved and educate ourselves about modern day methods of systemic oppression such as wealth gap, employment, housing discrimination, government surveillance, incarceration, drug arrests, and immigration arrest (Race Forward. 2016). When targeted by those who are meant to protect you, you start to have minorities being arrested and convicted for petty crimes they may not have even committed. This leads me to another aspect within our great country that has been set in place for minorities especially black males to fall victim to mass incarceration.
“These issues point to the failure of the United States’ to respect, protect and fulfill its obligations in regard to the rights to be free from discrimination, to liberty and security of the person, to be equal before the law and to equal protection of the law” (Amnesty International USA. 2016). People make mistakes and we tend to look at these people with criminal backgrounds as unprofessional and unable to be productive members of society. This notion must change due to the fact that the justice system is not fair. Sure it doesn’t directly affect the white population, but minority homes are being split apart, and fathers and mothers of children are being taken each day. My one question is how could we let this happen, nobody is that heartless. It is because we are oppressed as a people and have been institutionalized through modern day forms of oppression through educational, governmental, and societal standards to think everything is at a homeostatic state. The U.S. makes up 5% of the world’s population yet it makes up 22% of the world’s prison population (Amnesty International USA. 2016). Through this practice of what I like to call the “unnoticed racism” or institutionalized racism, lies a pattern expressed by mainstream political, governmental, and social institutions.