American's Prison Problem: A Solution?

Over the past 4 posts I have talked about the issues found in the American criminal justice system. Currently the United States has the largest prison population in the world.  The number of prisoners in this country is extremely disproportionate to our population. This can be attributed to mandatory minimum sentencing laws currently at work in America. Because of these laws, minor drug offenders end up serving life sentences. Because these people are not violent, many see no reason to keep them in jail this long. Furthermore, minorities are incarcerated at higher rates than their white counter parts.  In fact presently, there are as many black men in jail as were in slavery in antebellum America. Because of the overflow of prisoners, prison has become a billion dollar industry, with many companies being paid by the government to hold criminals. These facilities are corrupt and expensive and completely unjust. So now that we understand all the problems the American Prison system has, let’s look at a proposed solution to America’s prison problem.

In 2015 a bipartisan group of senators proposed what would have been ground breaking reform for the prison system. The proposed bill would eliminate the “three strikes” rule. The three strikes rule gives offenders three strikes before they have to serve mandatory minimum sentences. This rule is how many non violent offenders end up spending excessively long sentences despite their non violent status. The elimination of this rule would free millions of non violent offenders and save millions more from future incarceration.

Furthermore, the bill would allow 6,500 crack cocaine offenders to challenge their sentences. This bill eliminates old restrictions put on powder cocaine offenders, so if it were to pass, these convicted peoples would have a chance at reduced sentences or even freedom. This would create second chances for so many non violent offenders.

Another aspect of the bill would limit the use of solitary confinement in juvenile facilities. Solitary confinement is often used as a punishment in prison for bad behavior. However it has major psychological repercussions. A New York University study found that solitary confinement could cause disrupted thinking and sometimes even inability to think. These symptoms can often lead to psychosis, meaning a disconnection from reality. So prisoners would come into prisoner with no mental illnesses, and leave with a very serious one. In youth this can be even more detrimental, as they have the rest for their adult lives ahead of them. This part of the bill is very important for the health of future generations.

The last guideline will allow judges to use more discretion when sentencing offenders affected by mandatory minimums. This would dramatically reduce the number of non violent offenders serving life sentences. Several judges have said during sentencing hearings that they do not feel like the sentences they are forced to hand down are unjust. If judges were able to use their discretion they could limit the time served and save federal money by keeping less people in jail for less time. This regulation is perhaps the most vital one in the bill.

This bill faced oppositions from a small sect of senate republicans. They said the bill would result in the release of violent criminals. They cited the drop in murder rates as evidence that mandatory minimums and the crack down on drugs being effective policies. Despite this the bill passed the senate judiciary committee on October 22^nd, 2015. Passing this committee means it would move on to the house to face judgment. But that was the last we have heard form this bill. In fact I am really not sure what happened to it, a majority republican house may have buried it so it could not be voted on. This just shows that despite bipartisan efforts, no bill can necessarily pass without the right people in leadership. Who knows if we will ever see this bill again.

 

Aside from this president Obama made several efforts to reform prisons. Including an executive order

to make private prisons illegal. This has since order has since been halted by the Trump administration and more specifically, Jeff Sessions. However, senators like New Jersey’s Cory Booker are committed to finding solutions for America’s prison problem.

So what do you think about this proposed bill? Is it the answer to America’s prison problem? Should this bill be reintroduced in the house? Personally I think this is a start but we need much more radical change in order to fix all of the problems in America’s correctional system.

Private Prisons

Because America has the largest prison population in the world, there are multiple types of prisons. One of the most problematic of these is private prisons. Private prisons, as opposed to federal state prisons, are owned by private citizens are for profit. That’s right; people make money off the incarceration of others. Prison has become a billion dollar industry and it is promoting incarceration as a way to make money. Private prisons are a huge piece of what is wrong with the American prison system.

So what exactly are private prisons? As I previously stated, private prisons are for profit privately owned institutions. Because of the mass incarceration problem in America, State and Federal prisons do not physically have enough room to hold all of the incarcerated people. So the government has resorted to paying private businesses to build and maintain prisons and inmates. This has turned prison into a business.

Furthermore, the more prisoners kept in these private facilities, the more money private prison companies make. So needless incarceration of non-violent offenders is promoted because of the potential profit. In fact, some private prison contracts have what is called “Lock up Quotas”, meaning that is the prison is not provided enough prisoners by the state, then tax payers will incur a fee from the company. Basically the government is given an ultimatum, arrest as many people as possible to fill private prisons, or pay a penalty fee.

These facilities are run by underqualified and under paid correctional officers. Private prison guards make significantly less than federal prison gaurds make. A private correctional officer makes about $28,000 a year or about $14 an hour. While a federal corrections officer makes about $47,000 a year or about $21 an hour. The salaries of the prison guards differ dramaticly from those of there supieriors at private prison companies. While correctional officers salaries leave them near the poverty line, big company executives make salaries that range from $1-6 million dollars a year.

Private prisons are also notoriously corrupt.  The inmates are treated horribly and there are many cases of cover-ups for inmate assault. Take Estelle Richardson’s case. Richardson was found murdered in her solitary confinement cell. Her skull was fractured and she had several broken ribs. She was in prison for a minor drug offense and had two young children waiting for her on the outside. The only other people in the area with her were four prison guards. But Richardson was not at just any prison, she was an inmate at a CCA or Correction Corporations of America prison. CCA is on of largest private prison companies in America, with a net worth of over $2 billion dollars. So while the four prison guards were indicted in the case, they were never convicted due to lack of evidence. In fact, the only camera in the room at the time happened to stop working during the time of the attack. Many have said that the CCA let their guards get away with her murder.

Another example of private prison corruption is a 2008 dubbed “Kids for Cash”. This scandal involved two local Pennsylvania judges. Each judge was paid $1 million dollars to sentence children who had committed minor offenses; some had committed no offense at all. Over the course of this scandal 2,000 kids were sentenced to private prisons. Both judges received hefty prison sentences but the damage was done and many children had still served needless jail time.

Toward the end of his presidency, Obama announced that he along with the justice department, were beginning plans to end the use of private prisons. This decision had come after a federal audit found that private correctional facilities have more safety issues than federal prisons. Attorney general at the time, Sally Yates, ordered that private prison contracts not be renewed and cited declinging prison populations are a contributing factor to the decision. This decision would slowly but eventually phase out private prisons completely. Or it would have if Trump had not been elected. The new attorney general Jeff Sessions rescinded this Obama administration decision. Sessions cited future limits on prison population as his reason for the decision. While there is always the possibility for future legislation, in this republican dominated government we live in currently, it looks like private prisons are here to stay.

So what are your thoughts on private prisons? Did you know this was an issue? Do you think private prisons are a good idea? Let me know in the comments!

Racial Inequality in the Prison System

This week I want to talk about racial inequality in the prison system. Given that black history month has just recently come to a close, I feel that this is a very prevalent and important topic to discuss. The prison system disproportionately affects African Americans and minorities in general much more than white American.  This issue is tearing apart the fabric of many primarily African American communities.

The basis of the problem lies in the numbers. While about 30% of the country is a minority, they account for about 60% of the prison population. This in itself shows an unjust bias to minorities in the justice system. To break it down by race, a 1 in every 15 African American men are incarcerated at any given time. The same numbers effect Hispanic men by 1 in 36 but white menonly by 1 in 106.

This issue largely in part can be attributed to racial profiling. According to findings by the Department of Justice, African American and Hispanic drivers are three times as likely to be subject to a search when pulled over than white drivers.  African Americans in particular are four times as likely to be subject to the use of force during police encounters. These numbers are a clear indication of racial profiling in the police force.

This discrimination begins early I the lives of young minorities in America. Over 70% of arrests that occur on school property involve an African America or Hispanic student. To further the point, African American and Hispanic youths make up 60% of incarcerated youth in prison today. On top of that, more minority youths are sentenced as adults then white youths. In fact, 58% of incarcerated African American youths are sentenced as adults.

This racial inequality affects women to. The number of incarcerated woman has a whole has grown by 800% in the past three decades and a disproportionate amount of these incarcerated women are minorities. African American woman are three times more likely to go to jail than white women, and Hispanic woman are 69% more likely to go to jail then white women. This proves that these inequalities do not discriminate by age or gender.

Minority offenders are also far more likely to receive longer and more cruel sentences. A study done by the U.S. sentencing commission found that African Americans typically receive sentences 10% longer than white people who commit the same crimes. African Americans are also 20% more likely to be sentenced to jail time and 21% more likely to be subject to mandatory minimums.

So what can we blame for this? How do these inequalities happen? Well the war on drugs has a lot to do with it. African American communities are far more likely to be targeted for drug investigations than white communities. A human rights watch study found that people of color are no more likely to sell drugs then white people. African Americans only represent14% of regular drug users, why are they 37% of drug users arrested? In fact, 1 in 3 adults arrested for a drug related offense is African American.

These injustices also follow minority offenders outside of prison. When they are released there wages tend to be lower than those of white offenders. The wages of both black and white offenders go down after being incarcerated, but it affects African American men and women much more than their white counter parts. Wages grow 21% slower for African American men and women than white men and women.

Felony convictions also prevent 31% of African American men from voting. This is because felony convictions looses you your right to vote, but because a disproportionate amount of African Americans have felony convictions, this law affects far more of the African American community. Many have blamed the election of Donald Trump on the overwhelming number of African Americans unable to vote because of felony convictions.

So what do you think of this issue? Were you aware of this problem prior to reading this? Do any of these number surprise you? A lot of them really shocked me. There is still a lot of work to be done to reach true equality in America.  

Mandatory Minimums

One of the leading contributing factors to American prisons being so full is mandatory minimum sentence length. This means judges have to give certain crimes a mandatory amount of prison time regardless of the circumstances under which the crime was committed. This has caused many unnecessarily long sentences, costing years off the lives of non-violent offenders.

Minimum sentencing lengths began in the 1980’s when America decided to crack down on crime. As a result the number of incarcerated adults in America quadrupled.  According a Washington post study that means 1 in every 100 American adults is incarcerated.  Almost 2,000,000 people.

Aside from boosting the prison population, Mandatory minimums do not reduce crime. The fact is, at the time of the crime most offenders are not even aware of the mandatory minimum placed on their offense. They do not think they will be caught or prosecuted; they are just trying to make money and survive.

Furthermore, minimum sentencing laws never effect big drug kind pins they way you would hope they do. Small man drug dealers are caught on the streets and have no information regarding the rest of the drug operation because they are too low to know anything of value. But on the rare occasion big drug kingpins are apprehended, they can take a plea deal and avoid serving long minimum sentences, deals that low-level drug dealers do not have the Intel to take. So these laws are not even serving their indented purpose of keeping big drug dealers in jail longer.

Of course one of the main issues with keeping prisoners in jail for longer is the cost to the taxpayer.  Not only is the cost of keeping a man in prison a waste, but the cost of the arrest, prosecution and conviction waste millions of taxpayer dollars every year.

Here are some examples of people whose lives have been ruined thanks to minimum sentencing.

Kevin Ott 

In 1996 Ott was caught caring 3 ½ ounces of meth and sentenced to life in jail. This was his third

drug related offense and thanks to the Oklahoma 3 strikes rule, he was sentenced to the minimum
sentence, life without parole. His mother has always dreamed he would be released. She is so hopeful that every year for the 21 years he has been in lock up she has bought him a Christmas present. So if he comes home, he will have year of presents waiting for him.

Sharanda Jones 

In 1999, Jones was convicted on one count of conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine. It was her first offense, but nonetheless she received life in prison with no chance of parole. She left behind an 8-year-old daughter when she was sentenced. That daughter would now be 26.  So because of one minor non-violent offense, she has missed her whole daughters childhood.

Abtiba Parker

Parker is currently serving a 42-year sentence for selling less than 3 grams of crack cocaine. Parker also suffers from a several mental illness, which he self medicated with marijuana. In order to continue buying marijuana, Parker began selling crack. He saw the drug as his only way to cope with his crippling mental illness. Because of the possession of the two drugs he we sentenced to a mandatory minimum sentence of 42 years instead of receiving the help he so desperately needs.

Celestia Mixon 

Mixon was only 21 when she was sentenced to 15 years for distributing meth. She had been addicted

to meth ever since she was 15, and was in the process of getting her life together. She was recovering and had recently just gotten a new job.  But, because of mandatory minimum sentencing she received 15 years, loosing some of the prime years of her life, right at the beginning of her fresh start.

These is just a few of the many many thousands of cases in which mandatory minimum sentencing has negatively impacted, and effectively ruined, the lives of American all over the country. There are not many ways out of these sentences either. In fact, if the laws stay as they are, the only way out would be an official pardon of the governor the their respective states or the president of the United States. While president Obama did recently hand out many pardons to non-violent offenders serving mandatory minimum sentences, there is still a lot of work to be done to free those unfairly serving.

What do you think about Mandatory Minimum sentences? Should they be done away with?  Are they every just? Let me know!