Republican Senator Tom Cotton has an asinine assessment of America’s incarceration and jail system: apparently, we are not jailing enough folks. Working with Democrats and other Republicans on a bill that will offer some sort of criminal justice system reform, Tom Cotton became exasperated and noted that most perpetrators are not jailed or punished enough, and that there is an “under-incarceration problem.”
The Facts About Incarceration
Since the late 1980s, the United States federal and state governments have been hellbent on imprisoning those who may have their culpability rooted in much more intricate economic and social realities. This has caused the prison complex to balloon. Currently, the United States jails more people per capita than any other nation on this planet – even though crime rates have been on a steady decline for the past 25 years.
American incarceration also has a vicious relationship with people of color, especially those coming from poorer neighborhoods. Compared to White Americans, Black Americans are almost six times more likely to be incarcerated, and Latinos are three times more likely. It is so abysmal, that 11 percent of Black men between the ages of 20 and 34 are in jail this very instant.
Women are also the latest segment of the population to have been incarcerated at an increasing rate. The rate of women being incarcerated is nearly double the rate of men since the mid-1980s.
Senator Tom Cotton, what are you talking about when you say “under-incarceration?”
Deeper Into The Ramifications Of Incarceration
Outside of the fact that America’s prisons are turning into a for-profit machine that uses cheap labor – those who finally make it out of the jail system are unfairly ostracized. Friends may deem them as delinquents, families may not feel safe around them, and many jobs are hesitant to hire a person who has a criminal record. By not treating the underlying cause of criminal activity and helping to properly rehabilitate former prisoners into civilian life, the prison-industrial complex has produced impaired individuals that are in danger of recidivism.
People are becoming more cognizant of the sometimes dramatic consequences of petty crimes and the ramifications of the prison-industrial complex, which will hopefully cause a shifting of attitudes towards former prisoners.
Featured image by Michael Vadon on Flickr, available under an Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
