There is a massive and pressing need for prison reform in the United States. Not only because African-Americans are unfairly targeted by law enforcement, given harsher sentences by judges, and subjected to the community of violence which prevails inside the walls of US prisons but also because people are being locked up for life and having the key to their freedom, parole, being thrown away. Let's look at some statistics real quick:
“As of 2012, there were 159,520 people serving life sentences, an 11.8 percent rise since 2008. One of every nine individuals in prison is serving a life sentence. The population of prisoners serving life without parole (LWOP) has increased more sharply than those with the possibility of parole: there has been a 22.2 percent increase in LWOP since just 2008, an increase from 40,174 inmates to 49,081. Approximately 10,000 lifers have been convicted of nonviolent offenses. Nearly half of lifers are African American and 1 in 6 are Latino. More than 10,000 life-sentenced inmates have been convicted of crimes that occurred before they turned 18 and nearly 1 in 4 of them were sentenced to LWOP. More than 5,300 (3.4 percent) of the life-sentenced inmates are female.”
This summary of the findings from “Life Goes On: the historic rise of life sentences in America” is thanks to Andrew Cohen at the Brennan Center of Justice (I’ll link to his article below). What these statistic reflect is deeply disconcerting. The amount of people serving life sentences is on the rise despite falling rates of violent crime. Life without parole is also seeing a even more dramatic shift. LWOP is the among the worst punishments we can subject a US citizen too second only to the death sentence so in the wake of decreasing crime rates why are more and more US citizens being given such a harsh term? On answer could be monitory minimums which require judges to give a minimum of X number of years per crime with no regard to the particular circumstances of the individual case. Laws which enforce such generalities are denying thousands of people whom are capable of reform from having any hope of a real life. Without hope of escaping the hell that is the US prison system what incentive to these individuals have to reform themselves? Prisoner on prisoner violence, rape, and murder is much higher among individuals whom are already facing life with no chance of freedom because they know that there can be no greater punishment in life then what they are already facing.
Of the 10,000 lifers serving for nonviolent crime many are victims of the debunked drug war. People have had their life taken away from them for selling or distributing drugs such as Marihuana which are not only proven to be safe and non-addictive but are actually legal in five US states. The fact that you can get 20 years in prison for an ounce of pot in Louisiana yet you can legally smoke it in Washington DC is an absurd hypocrisy. Depending on your age and history getting caught just once or twice with this relatively harmless drug can be a life sentence in many southern states. This is the result of failed drug policy that is not only expensive financially but is costing the lives of thousands of individuals for whom this victimless crime is their only offense.
The most appalling statistic though is that that nearly half of people serving life sentences are African Americans. It is a sad reality that any failure of justice within our criminal justice system manifest itself more severely in the African American community but the epidemic of life sentencing is a particularly cruel example of this. Unfortunately this statistic of “nearly half” under represents how pronounced this problem is in some areas of the USA. In states such Georgia and Mississippi up to 72% of people with life sentences are Black while “in the federal system, 62.3 percent of the life-sentenced population is African American.” Even if one considered, for the sake argument, clearly false reports of increased crime rates among individuals of lower income or subjected to supposed radicalized gang culture these numbers show unjustifiable discrimination against the African American community by the Criminal Justice system of the United States. A study I have been unable to locate but would like to see conducted would be one examining how many additional years in person on average a black person gets for committing the same crime as a white person. Racism among judges and juries needs to be addressed but as this is hard to prove and needs to be done on an individual level I would point to ending mandatory minimum sentencing and reducing the use of LWOP to only the most heinous an exceptional of crimes.
In Sumner’s perfect world prisons exist not as a means of punishing individuals or as mean cheep labor for government projects but as a real initiation dedicated to reform. I would like to see people treated as the citizens they are and given the right to vote to improve their condition. I would like to a massive reduction in the prison population starting with people who were given harsher sentences because of their race. These are not unrealistic goals. Trumps America can not call itself the “land of the free” and have the highest rate of incarceration in history. We can not abide by the stereotype of black male criminality that has shaped American criminal justice policy since its inception. No Politician wants to speak for criminals because looking “weak” on crime has been political poison for decades but if they refuse to do so then it our responsibility to defend the rights of our fellow citizen behind bars. I’ll vote for the felons for all to often the felons can not vote and because there is nowhere in US society where racial discrimination is more clearly proven than in our criminal justice system.
Link to sources:
https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/wasting-their-lives-away-case-against-mandatory-minimums
http://sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Life-Goes-On.pdf
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