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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhat is Mass Incarceration?
An overview of how the U.S. government locked millions of people in cages to be forgotten.
Over the past 30 years, the U.S. has put in place radical, unprecedented policies and practices that attempted to address crime through prioritizing harsh and disproportionate punishment, rather than prevention or rehabilitation. By 2010, 7.25 million Americans were under some form of correctional control ¹ either in prison or jail, or on probation or parole up from 1.84 million in 1980.²
The term mass incarceration refers to the unique way the U.S. has locked up a vast population in federal and state prisons, as well as local jails.
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How did this happen?
The tough on crime punishment philosophy of the 1980's and 90's, combined with a heinous War on Drugs, led to legislation under Republican and Democratic administrations that used a jail cell as a first, rather than last, resort for people who broke the law.
This uncompromising posture, which often exploited racial fear, became an essential part of running a political campaign. For years, elected officials competed with one another on how brutally they would be willing to punish people who broke the law, especially regarding drug-code violations. Legislators enacted policies that led to more people being locked away for increasingly smaller offenses, and combined them with further policies that kept people locked up longer.
The prison population skyrocketed.
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Way More:
https://medium.com/@dan_nott/what-is-mass-incarceration-ff737196580#.5jnmulqlz