Incarceration Nation

After over six years working, researching, and studying the field of criminal justice and criminology, I seem to be constantly approaching the same conclusion as many others have recently; we are a nation of incarceration. Why has America earned this title? Is it a bad thing to want all criminals locked up? Isn’t it more effective to just “lock ‘em up and throw away the key”? That other stuff seems so expensive and time consuming, isn’t it cheaper to just throw them in prison? I have no doubt that these are questions many Americans ask themselves when faced with the mounting criminal justice issues, and, hopefully, I will answer some of them for all of you asking yourselves the same questions.

Why has America earned the title of “Incarceration Nation”?

Well, let’s start simple. Americans make up approximately 4.5% of the world’s population, but when we look specifically at the world’s incarcerated population, we equate to about 25%. Obviously, our incarcerated population is significantly more than any other country, and in most cases, more than any other two countries combined. Doesn’t this just prove we have an effective, hard-working criminal justice system, you might ask? Hard working, certainly, but for a whole multitude of reason, effective is the last word I would associate with our criminal justice system, especially when you factor the jurisdictions and instances where recidivism rates are near 70%. Couple these incarceration and recidivism rates with the fact it costs as much to incarcerate an inmate as it does to pay a teacher, especially considering the budget cuts to our education system, and you begin to understand the scope of the problem.

The World Justice Project recently released their Rule of Law Index where they assessed countries based on the criminal justice system. They ranked countries criminal justice systems based on access to affordable civil justice,  civil justice being free of discrimination, civil justice being free of corruption, civil justice being free of improper government influence, civil justice being effectively enforced, ADR’s are accessible, impartial, and effective, how effective the criminal investigation system is, how timely and effective the criminal adjudication system is, how effective the correctional system is, how free of discrimination the overall criminal justice system is, How free of corruption is the criminal justice system, how free the criminal justice system is of improper government influence, and due process of law. Not only was America pretty far behind the leaders in every category, we were well behind our peer group, North America and Western Europe and High Income, in most categories as well. Of our regional ranking, America was ranked third to last for factor 4: Fundamental Rights and factor 8: Criminal justice. Is this at all acceptable for a country trying to set an example?

There is only one more piece to this puzzle I’m going to talk about today, the mass incarceration of African-Americans. African-Americans make up, roughly, somewhere between 13.2% and 13.5% our America’s population, to put it into perspective, about the combined population of New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago. But somehow, 33% of our incarcerated population is African-American. I do not want to speak too much to this issue now, as I will discuss it in depth later, but I believe Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow:Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness speaks to the issue quite well.

LH