“The nature of the criminal justice system has changed. It is no longer primarily concerned with the prevention and punishment of crime, but rather with the management and control of the dispossessed.” ― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Reducing the identity of an individual to be nothing more than a “criminal” provokes a response of anxiety and anger within society. Once assault, battery, rape, theft, drug possession, etc. has been noted, the community wants the person to be in total isolation. Most believe that precautions must be taken to ensure safety for all innocent citizens right away. However, has this idea been taken too far, and now challenges what law really means? Most prisoners today have become apart of the dispossessed. They are disfranchised and alienated from society, due to the management of the government.
Various individuals and communities are consistently in need of help. This issue is everywhere around me, inside and outside of the town that I live in. I even tutor elementary school students who have grown up in a broken school system, which leaves them full grades levels behind the normal standards. Whatever the problem is, there are always victims of a situation who are in need of help.
Law maintains order within society and helps to ensure the safety of all people. The purpose of the law is to regulate the behavior and actions of people within society, and to enforce consequences if laws are violated as a further means to regulate behavior. I have been taught that the law is fair to all who are accused, as “due process” enforces this. Lawyers, courts, etc. are there to penalize anyone who violates the law, but the accused are “innocent until proven guilty” and have rights that guarantee this standard is met.
However, I now have come to realize that law, which is so heavily valued within our country, has its own flaws that are rarely exposed to the public. Law may promote justice, but there are injustices and oppression from the worsening situation of mass incarceration. Mass incarceration is a direct result of the unequitable regulation of crime from the government, and not from the common misperception that crime rates have increased.
In less than 50 years, the US criminal justice administration has somehow transformed the integrity of law entirely, as it is no longer focused on the simplistic ideals that I have been taught. Mass incarceration is the root of this problem, and its impacts on its victims are unacceptable.
There has been a substantial increase in the number of individuals confined in United State’s prisons over the past decades. Mass incarceration has become a worrisome problem as the US is only home to 5% of the world population, yet 25% of prisoners within the world, proving to be the country with the highest rate of incarceration.
“The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Many of those people deserve to be in prison; however, some of them do not” — Rand Paul
Although the developing problem’s historical roots are recent, the “indigent defense crisis” is also held responsible for this situation. Gideon vs. Wainwright set the precedent that all people have the right to a counsel if they cannot afford one on their own. Bryan Stevenson, a well known public interest lawyer who focuses his career on helping the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned says that today, “states are unable to fund adequate indigent defense systems or provide sufficient resources for oversight, training, and management of cases.” In simpler terms, state defense lawyers are underfunded and overworked. The fundamentals of the right to counsel have exploited those accused and with minimal funds, leaving them with insufficient defense.
This problem targets the lower classes in the country, subjecting this group to be the greatest victim. For example, poor convicted citizens may spend excessive amounts of time detained while waiting for a lawyer to be appointed to them, as they cannot afford to pay bail. People charged with misdemeanors (i.e. public intoxication) may even appear in court hearings without a lawyer. Here, they must decide to either plead guilty to be released, only to be burdened by fines, court, costs, etc.. Or, they could remain in jail waiting for a lawyer. Application fees for a public defender in 43 states can even range from $10 to $480, placing an even further financial burden on defendants. Clearly, the most financially stable option is to actually remain detained and waiting for assistance.
Nothing about this is fair. The government has been keeping these oppressed individuals detained as they do not have the financial means to fight back. Therefore, they are not able to continue living their lives due to these excessive amounts of time. Mass incarceration is a direct result as numerous accused citizens remain in confinement simply waiting. I see no justice in this, while the purpose of the law is to uphold this principle.
The Impact
The impact of this situation is astonishing, although many are not aware. The legality system in the United States has exploited many convicts, preventing them from living out their lives. Innocent citizens will spend excessive amounts of time detained, forced to stay away from their families and homes. This is shown directly in the previous exonerations that have been made within our country.
Exonerations within the court are made when a convicted criminal is relieved of all blame and was innocent in reality. 1,733 exonerations in the United States have been recorded since 1989, while 2015 was record-breaking with 149 exonerations. Of the 149, all served 14.5 years in prison on average before being proven innocent.
One may be “innocent until proven guilty”, yet countless years of their lives are being lost as they sit behind bars, subjected to the corruption of the legal system. They are kept away from their spouses, children, friends, and home. While instead, they wait in jail until they have a chance at freedom. It truly is ironic to talk about criminal justice, when it is justice that lacks in reality.
Take Bobby Johnson, from Connecticut, for example. An African American convicted in 2006 for the murder of Herbert Fields. After being held in jail for 9 years, Johnson was exonerated in 2015. Johnson had little to no literacy skills and was appointed with an inadequate defense attorney who did little investigation to support the convict. He plead guilty after his interrogators told him that the probation would never be an option if he did not do so. Johnson truly believed that he had an honest defense to help, supporting his every word, while this was not the reality. The case had become entirely strategic. Detectives even lied and claimed that there was physical evidence linking Johnson to the crime, while police records later proved his innocence.
Johnson’s life was compromised. His freedom was taken away from him for 9 years, while he sat behind bars knowing that he was an innocent man. His upsetting, yet angering story emphasizes the injustices in the legal system in the United States that are never touched upon. Although we can recognize that complete accuracy can’t always be ensured by police at first, it is important to consider the extreme amounts of time that these innocent citizens remain confined for. The accused should not have to wait years locked up waiting to prove their innocence.
However, those already in prison are also subjected to the diminishing integrity of the US legal system. Even on probation, inmates can be charged with fees in order for private corporations to profit. In an attempt to cut taxes, private probation companies profit by requiring probationers to pay for necessities (i.e. drug treatment), with fees running about $80–100 a month. The United States legal system is revolving around money now, while its purpose is to provide justice to individuals, and rehabilitation to criminals without putting them into debt once they leave prison. US detainment has become a business, while incarceration should be focused on fulfilling the fundamentals of law within society.
The impacts of mass incarceration are chilling. I no longer see the law as it was taught to me, and instead, I look at people like Bobby Johnson, who struggle to get out of the corruption. I notice the poor who have no financial means to fight for their freedom, and instead, take time out of their lives to wait.
Is it necessary though?
Despite how mass incarceration has altered the integrity of the law within the United States, it is important to consider if the harsher circumstances have been a deterrent against crime. If crime rates decrease, then these injustices seem to be benefiting the country in reality… right?
The most recent statistics come from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) reporting that both violent and property crime is 50% lower than in 1991. Although crime rates seem to be decreasing at a slow but gradual pace, the legal systems in place at the moment may not actually be correlated to this.
In fact, decreasing crime rates have very little relation to incarceration rates increasing. As the Atlantic noted, “Today, a 1% increase in incarceration would lead to a microscopic 0.02% decline in crime. That is statistically indistinguishable from having no effect at all,”. Therefore, harsher sentences seem to have no significant impact on crime rates today.
Decreasing crime rates can be the cause of other various factors that are currently being analyzed. As noted in the chart above, there are many proposed explanations. For example, income growth could be the real deterrent against crime, as opposed to the 0–1% that increasing incarceration rates is responsible for.
We need change. Now.
Clearly, not everyone is a direct target of this injustice, but it is important to recognize the situation and become aware of this developing problem to prevent it from worsening even further.
Although I am consistently taught about how law keeps order in our community, my original definition of law has been tainted. I no longer see the “checks and balances” in our government that maintains order. Instead, I see the ones who are oppressed by it, and the convicted criminals who do not deserve to remain behind bars but instead have no choice. The “penalties” involved in law are no longer there to enforce rules, as they have become abused.
Things must change in order to give justice back to these oppressed individuals. It is not fair for the government to take the lives of the wrongly convicted, or even violate the rights of criminals. Corruption within the government is always focused on, however, it is often overlooked within the law. Law no longer upholds justice within society, and its negative shift is a warning sign that change must be made to stop our country from continuing down this dangerous path to a fully unjust legal system.
