Why US Should End Mass Incarceration

Overcrowded prison has become an even more urgent problem because of COVID-19 (Abney). It is challenging to perform social distancing inside the facility, incarcerated people tend to have disabilities, and over ten percent are elders who are vulnerable to COVID-19. These people’s conditions, especially during this pandemic, are horrific, yet the general public has little concerns about this situation. It seems that people have collectively desensitized themselves about human caging and dehumanized locked up people to “criminals” instead of “human beings with families and lives and hopes and dreams.” The idea that we need prisons to keep criminals from harming society seems like an idea that is normalized and unquestioned. However, people rarely put more thought into whether prisons are fulfilling what they are intended to fulfill. We should abolish prisons.

Prisons should be eliminated because we should not live in a society where we solve violence with vengeance and lives are not treated as precious (Kushner). Prisons today “have violated human rights and failed at rehabilitation” and it is “not even clear that prisons deter crime or increase public safety.” This description shows that prisons are ineffective and problematic because we are treating people who committed crimes by ruining their lives, indirectly proving that violence is the way to solve problems. Prisons are described as “catchall solutions to social problems,” and we should not “replace one oppressive system with another.” The governments used prisons as a collective solution instead of looking into and solving each situation to prevent more problems from occurring in the future. These complications should make people rethink prisons’ purpose and whether it is the only way or most efficient way to spend our resources and protect society.

Since the establishment of prisons in America, prisons discriminated against minorities and removed the unwanted from society. The Spanish colonists were the first to introduce human caging and build prisons (Hernandez, 4). They had “no intentions of merging with, submitting to, or even permanently lording over the Indigenous societies” and eliminated them by criminalizing and incarcerating them (4,7). Incarceration then targeted poor white men, who were “migrating constantly, working little, and living and loving beyond the bound the heterosexual normative,” Chinese and Mexican immigrants, and the African American populations (4-6). Today, the Black American’s incarceration rate is outstandingly greater than other populations despite its small percentage within the general public (Lefty). These actions suggest that prisons were used to target communities that were seen as outcasts by the governments. Many injustices lie within the prison system’s inmate selection and should thus be reevaluated and abolished.

Although it is a widespread opinion that prison populations should be reduced, people should still focus on abolishment as a long term goal for society (Bazelon). An article about prison abolition mentioned that “abolition means not just the closing of prisons but the presence of vital systems of support that many communities lack” (Kushner). People must denormalize prison’s existence and think more critically about the inequalities that could foster crimes and put more effort into changing those inequalities. An article about alternatives towards prisons mentioned that “ending mass incarceration, and ensuring fairness throughout the criminal justice system, aren’t in tension with public safety. It is integral to it” (Bazelon). Abolitionists are not trying to release all the dangers into society but enforce public safety in a more efficient prevention approach. In Scandinavia, the prison abolish movement has led to “open prisons” that focuses on “reintegrating people into society” and has shown low recidivism rates (Kushner). This means that emphasizing on helping people get back on their feet after prisons is the direction to work on to reduce crime.

Prisons should be abolished because we should not resolve violence and crimes with elimination and destruction. The unequal policing and selection of inmates suggest that prisons are not an act of justice, but just an accumulation and procrastination of societal problems. Instead of jails, we should dedicate our resources and attention to preventions through social welfare to resolve inequalities. A Taiwanese podcast discussing the citizen judge bill talked about allowing citizens to decide how long an individual would have to stay in prison without experiencing prison and knowing what the sentence would mean emotionally and physically. The harm of incarceration is beyond the public’s imagination. We should work towards a society that helps those in need, not by locking them up altogether.

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References

Abney, Saya. “Toward communities of care: Disability justice as a cornerstone of abolition.” The Daily Californian, 23 Oct. 2020 www.dailycal.org/2020/10/23/communities-of-care-disability-justice-as-abolition/. Accessed 27 October 2020.

Bazelon, Emily. “If Prisons don’t work, What Will?” The New York Times, 5 Apr. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/opinion/mass-incarceration-sentencing-reform.html. Accessed 27 October 2020.

Hernández, Kelly. Introduction Conquest and Incarceration. City of Inmates, by Hernández. The University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

Kushner, Rachael. “Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Filmore Might Change Your Mind.” The New York Times Magazine, 17 Apr. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/magazine/prison-abolition-ruth-wilson-gilmore.html. Accessed 27 October 2020.

Lefty, Lauren. “Global Histories of Confinement and Policing.” Global Culture War, 21 October 2020, Zoom. Lecture Address.