Criminal Justice 101 | Course Paper

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Mass Incarceration: Impacts on Crime and Society

Jerry Xu

CRJS203.01

Mr. Derek G. Velazco

Greenville College

28 November 2015

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Mass incarceration is an effective way to control crime rate in the United States, but

there are still positive and negative consequences existing in the society. According to the

data on juvenile crime, most participants of mass incarceration are the teenage group,

between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. The impacts of mass incarceration on the

teenage group are more likely to be noticed than any other social group in the United States.

Mass incarceration seems to be one of the specific policies especially made by the

U.S. government to reduce the crime rate. Most people believe that putting all criminals in

prison is how the government treats crime, but also the conduct problems are created by mass

incarceration with significant consequences, such as the economic issues and the credibility

of the criminal justice system. Rivett-Carnac,who is the publisher of the policing magazine,

says mass incarceration is supposed to be stopped in the future. He said “We need less

incarceration, not more”, and this is the common attitude of most people who are the

taxpayers to support the public services in the Untied States. However, people have to admit

that mass incarceration is reducing crime and it is working well in the public society (Rivett-

Carnac 2015).

There are three concerns and effects that focus on mass incarceration, and people

must care about reducing the crime rate and the economic impacts, but the social influence is

also a major concern of mass incarceration in recent years. The essential meaning of mass

incarceration is trying to put all the criminals in the prison, no matter what circumstances in a

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crime. Especially, this idea implies treatment of the nonviolent crime in the United States

because mass incarceration includes an amount of the nonviolent criminal population in the

prison as well. In this way, the crime rate tends to go down since the prisoners have to spend

a longer time in the jail, and the American public security is getting better because of mass

incarceration. The criminal justice system needs to show the harsh side of the law and it will

have a better control on the crime. As a result, mass incarceration benefits the society to

reduce crime because the crime rate is depending on the harsh level of the judicial

punishment. It is one of the reasons why the crime rate is going down so dramatically in the

last twenty years.

Even thought the public spending on mass incarceration has a huge budget, the

government is still willing to put more money on the criminal justice system. The law

enforcement could take a larger budget instead of putting the money for the prison quality. A

huge amount of prisoners require more financial supports for having a better place or

environment to live in the cell room. However, it is hardly possible to achieve the

requirements in order to change their life quality in the jail because the public spending is

based on the money from the taxpayers in this country.

In many cases, the purposes of mass incarceration are trying to reduce the crime

rate, and improving the living conditions in U.S. prisons is not mentioned. People would

know there is no comfortable life in the prison and this could be a great opportunity for the

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policing propaganda department to warn people stopping the crime, or the prison is

welcoming anyone who would like to have a try. Although there are a lot of public media

criticizing the poor living conditions in prison, there is no way to make it any better because

prison is not supposed to be a better place for anyone to stay anyway.

The public society wants to label most U.S. prisons as a violation of the human

right that is against the democracy, but it is ridiculous to make this argument as a pretext to

question the authority of the criminal justice system. In other words, such criticism is a

disguised replacement of the concept.