The United States tops the list of the countries with the highest incarceration rate. The incarceration rate in this country as of 2022 is 629. This year, there are a total of 2,068,800 incarcerated in this country. 90.00% of them are male while the rest are female.
Upon knowing that the United States has the highest incarceration rate, some people might be wondering the reasons that make this country have the highest incarceration rate. So, why is the United States incarceration rate so high?
According to the Senior Advisor of President Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, there are a few reasons that make the United States the country with the highest incarceration rate. Some of these factors include:
- The lack of investment in schools and economic opportunity
- The draconian drug laws and bail policies that criminalize poverty
- The inadequate reentry services and employment discrimination against those who have been incarcerated
- Etc.
Apparently, the United States has less than 5% of the world’s population. However, about 25% of them are prisoners. The number adds up to 2.2 million people who are in prisons in the country, which include more than 11 million people who move through the local jails every year. Everything costs $80 billion every year. Meanwhile, 70 million people or about 1/3 of working age in the United States have some kind of criminal record.
When the former President of the United States, President Barack Obama, laid out the principles of his administration for criminal justice reform, he argued that the main focus should be on taking a comprehensive approach that can be done by focusing on a total of three places, as follows:
- The community
The reason why the community should be focused on is because the roots of crime and incarceration are usually planted in underfunded schools and neighborhoods where jobs are hard to find. It is where the future is too dark and there is also no support for the young people. It is such a shame that a lot of girls and boys are trapped by the school to prison pipelines. Instead of sitting in juvenile detention, they should be learning something at school. The cycle of poverty and incarceration continues if the resources for schools, job training and economic development are still lacking.
- The courtrooms
To why the courtrooms are important is because usually people in the United States are put in the jails with sentences that do not match their actions. A ton of young people are treated badly like adults when in fact that they just love, support, and mentorship. Instead of getting the treatment, the victims of addiction or commercial sexual exploitation are usually imprisoned. Those with no or limited money usually spend weeks or months sitting in the hail just because they fail to pay the price of a fee, fine, or bond. The communities are not safer with the harmful mandatory minimum sentences for an excessive amount of time that is disproportionate to the crime. They separate families, in addition to making the human fabric of the communities weak.
- The cell blocks
If you are wondering why the cell blocks are important, it is because those who are incarcerated in the United States usually leave prison with less capacity to succeed than when they first were sentenced. They are released with getting taught to learn skills first. It makes them become the victim of the revolving prison doors. In order to reduce the barriers that are faced by millions of justice involved individuals every year when going back to the communities from the prison and jails, the Federal Interagency Reentry Council was established by President Barack Obama.
Everyone has a different answer when it comes to answering the reason why the United States has the highest incarceration rate. A Supervisor Hospital Clerk named John shared his thoughts on a popular community called Quora. He said that according to what he read, there are many factors that create high crime rates, as follows:
- Race plays a big part in prison rates. For instance, an African American who is charged with the exact same charge as a Caucasian will get a harsher sentence on average. For example, stealing a car. After slavery, lynching, Jim Crow laws ended judicial system unfairly shot at African Americans. African American has become the main target even though they make up 13% of the United State’s population and they make up 3% of the prison population in this country.
- Drugs make people do the craziest and the most dangerous things. Instead of sitting in jail, they should get a rehab oriented program. The OP thinks making it like a low level prison geared toward getting sober, focusing on mental health, trade school programs, exit plan to keep them away from the same place, people and things that got them there is better.
- It is almost impossible for the reoffenders who just got out of the prisons to find a job as they are stigmatized depending on the severity of their charges, misdemeanor, felony’s, and so on.
- There is an issue for all races when seeing bad adults raise children badly. That a perfect family clearly does not exist. At some point when one becomes an adult, they have to take responsibility for their own life. Unfortunately, they never had a chance. Basically, the poor man mentality can be passed down to his children and his next generations. The children who grow up in really poor communities suffer from this. They have no idea that things are different and they have no choice but to follow the same old path. In order to step up and to get these poor children out of the situation, major counseling, coaching or guidance is needed.
- Harsh sentencing such as locking up people for the 3 strike rule, 20 to life is one of the factors. Long prison sentences for non-violent crimes such as drug possession should be changed.
A bookworm and researcher especially related to law and citizenship education. I spend time every day in front of the internet and the campus library.
