On The American Prison System

Senator Wire

Ah, the good ol’ American justice system. What could ever go wrong with such an infallible system? Unfortunately, the answer is overwhelmingly “a lot”. If you haven’t had the chance to yet, I highly recommend that you hop over to Youtube and watch John Oliver’s bit on his show “Last Week Tonight”. Here it is:

This video more than sums up the general problems inherent in today’s prison system, but it brings to light so many other problems we have as a country. We face issues like race inequality, gun violence, drug prohibition, and domestic abuse on a nearly daily basis. The news overstimulates our nerves with the dangers of stepping outside our front door, and we are left with an ultimately naive view of what happens to criminals once they move past the nightly news phase of their lives.

The truth is: it’s pretty awful. I’m sure you’ve seen this over and over again during the healthcare debates, but criminals get government mandated socialized medicine during their incarceration. For whatever reason, this resulted in a unanimous uproar from the right (although I think that may be more because of the buzz word, i.e. doublethink, behind the word “socialized” more than actual discontent). However, when compared with a “normal” incarceration rate of say Great Britain(148/100k) or Switzerland (87/100k), two similarly equipped “western” nations, we see the real disconnect. For the United States, the incarceration rate sits at a staggering 707/100k. Keep in mind, this is a per-capita rate, so to compare the populations of these countries mentioned would not be useful.

Diving a little bit further, we can see another pretty interesting statistic. The figure above shows that right around the mid-1980s (surprise, surprise see Youtube video below), the incarceration among drug-related incidents has more than doubled in percentage of total incarcerations. And looking at the graph just below, it’s quite apparent that general drug-related incidents have massively increased over the past 30 years.

But, “wait a second!” you say…Why does it seem like the drug-related incarcerations seem to heavily favor whites, while the rate among other races seems to climb indefinitely? Good question! Let’s dive a little deeper into how race inequality factors into this wonderful justice system of ours!

Looking at the graphic below, while a bit simple in its presentation, it’s pretty clear that there is a disconnect between who we are putting in jail. While 1 in 17 white males will suffer the inner sanctum of a jail cell, 1 in 3 black males will suffer the same fate. Now, gun homicides are more likely (at a rate of just over 2:1) for blacks than they are for whites, but that doesn’t really paint the whole picture, nor does it narrow the gap listed above. Despite no real evidence that black males do more drugs than white males, they are on the order of 15 times more likely to be arrested for doing so!

The further you delve into these numbers, the more that it seems the prison system is in shambles right now. Despite owning just ~1/20 of the world’s population, we are responsible for ~1/4 of its inmates. Throw away all of the notions of guns, domestic violence, racial inequality, etc. and this number alone should be enough to make your head spin. In a state like New York, the average inmate can end up costing the state’s taxpayers upwards of $60,000/year! And don’t even get me started on the fact that there is a heavy push to privatize our prison systems.

This is a problem that I just can’t help fight the feeling nobody wants to address. I get the feeling that our prison system’s faults are a microcosm for our country’s bigger issues. Issues like race equality, gender equality, domestic violence, gun violence… you know: the ones that have a media outlet drooling as they are brought to light…are so prevalent and yet we never seem to have any meaningful conversation about them, and it’s even worse when it comes to the prison system.

Almost half of incarcerated Americans are in prison for non-violent crimes. Class warfare is being waged, and it’s happening at a prison near you.

Thanks for reading

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