Author: Galia P.
The United States is often viewed as the best country in the world by both nationalistic inhabitants and outsiders searching for refuge. The term the American Dream has even been coined to reveal the idealistic concepts that one can supposedly achieve here. But among the many categories that the United States could champion, it instead holds the number one spot for the highest incarceration rate in the world.
The long withstanding model of criminal justice in the United States has been broken for centuries. With 2.3 million prisoners in the system, one cannot ignore or attempt to justify the obvious racial disparities and harsh sentences for petty crimes that are intertwined within our “justice” system. This is not a simple matter of “people commit more crimes,” the United States locks up more people per capita than any other nation in the world. While the number of people being convicted and sentenced is extremely excessive, the amount of times that individuals are caught in the jail churn is even higher. Jail churn includes those who have not been convicted, but are simply arrested and go to jail. The fact that at least 1 in 4 people who go to jail get arrested again in the same year is extremely alarming. The high rate of mass incarceration can be attributed to factors like the privatisation of the prison industrial complex and the over criminalization of drug use. These dehumanizing policies target vulnerable populations like addicts, the homeless, and those in extreme poverty.
In the land of the free once someone is caught up in the carceral cycle they are no longer free.
Criminalization of poverty in America ranges from arresting the homeless population for loitering or merely sleeping in public spaces, arresting parents for attempting to send their children to funded public schools, and excessively fining people for petty crime and citations. From bail bondsmen and private probation companies to the companies that serve meals and control prison telephone calls, corporations own the carceral system and benefit from exploiting the poor. The imposition of fines and fees in the legal system drastically impacts an individual’s ability to hire proper legal representation and puts those unable to pay in harmful situations. Not only do people become fiscally indebted to the legal system but those who are unable to pay must remain in pretrial jail; and spending only one night in jail increases the likelihood of a person being arrested again. Many who are detained in jail are not too dangerous to be released, they’re just too poor to afford bail bonds, and multiple studies have found that defendants could safely be released without threatening public safety if money bail ended. There are an abundance of reliable alternatives to the money bail system, such as release on own recognizance or unsecured bonds.
The population of children in adult prisons is also concerning. For example, Florida’s direct-file statute allows prosecutors to move juvenile cases to an adult court without consulting a judge; and according to the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice 8.8% of cases involving children are direct-filed. The juvenile system is set up to include education and rehabilitation but this is not present in adult prisons, and in some states these restrictions go as far as refusing eligibility for college coursework (acquiring a GED). Youth imprisonment is ineffective, it ultimately put kids at great risk of sexual and physical violence, increased trauma and suicide.
America faces a humanitarian crisis and we need to transform our criminal injustice system in order to address it. Corrective steps that we must take include not prosecuting and incarcerating the youth in adults prisons, ending the death penalty, and not turning poverty into a crime. These steps, along with the restoration of voting rights and treating addiction like the medical/psychological issue that it is, can strengthen communities and halt cycles of criminal activity.