Incarceration rate of the USA

The United States right now has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, not just compared to other countries and regions such as the European Union, but even compared to the US historically (Raphael, 2009). This essay will examine the growth of the US’s prison population that started in the 1970s (Raphael, 2009) and will argue that it is not due to an increase in crime in the US, but rather due to a history of tough-on-crime policies. This essay will also examine the issues, manly racial, that surround a high incarceration rate. Raphael in his article defines three broad factors that have an effect on incarceration rates, the first being the crime rate in the given country (Raphael, 2009). This might be considered the most basic explanation for why the US has a higher incarceration rate than other countries, as people would expect the two to correlate, but this essay will show that a high crime rate is not the reason for the high incarceration rate. First US crime rates are similar to those of other developed countries, only gun violence stands out, as it is more commonplace in the US than in other parts of the world (Tonry, 1999) However, although gun violence is an important issue it is not the explanation to the question of this essay, as less than 25% of people sent to prison are sentenced because of violent crimes (Tonry, 1999). Even when considering the fact that incarceration rates in the US compared to crime rates are higher than in other countries, one could still argue that the rise of the prison population is due to a similar rise in crime. Certainly, there is a bit of validity to this claim as crime rates did increase in this time (Tonry, 1999), but that does not show the full picture as to when comparing the US to countries such as Finland or Germany, where crime rates increased in a similar matter but incarceration rates decreased unlike in the US (Tonry, 1999) Thus imprisonment rates did not just simply increase because crime increased, rather “they rose because American politicians wanted them to rise (Tonry, 1999 p. 422). Raphael’s two other factors are the likelihood of being sent to prison conditional of committing a crime, and the length of sentences (Raphael, 2009). The first of these two being in close correlation with crime rates, increased as well, especially when looking at drug offenses (Raphael, 2009). The length of sentences increased as well for most crimes, and this closely correlates with public policy decisions at the time (Raphael, 2009). Raphael also underlines the argument made by Tonry that “increases in crime cannot explain a substantial portion of incarceration growth” (Raphael, 2009, pp 91), rather policy changes and changes in sentencing can (Raphael, 2009). Even though this essay pointed to an increase in crime rates in the second part of the 20th century, that is also not the full picture. The reason is that the rates of many types of crime, such as murder, rape, robbery, and property decreased between the 1980 and the early 2000s, but drug-related crime rates, in contrast, increased (Raphael, 2009). Looking at this time frame however, we can see that the crime rates did fluctuate, with for example murder and robbery seeing an increase around 1990, then going down once again (Blumstein 1998). However, in general, we can say that the crime rates stayed roughly stable around this time, while incarceration rates more than quadrupled, with the biggest increase in drug-related incarceration (Blumstein, 1998). In the 1970s US President Nixon declared illegal drugs as public enemy number one and started the war on drugs (Alexander, 2010). This era was then characterized by major media campaigns presenting drugs and drug users as dangers to society (Alexander, 2010). Politicians called and worked for hard sentencing laws, and actively vilified drug users. (Alexander, 2010). These policies led to a major increase in drug-related arrests, an increased risk of imprisonment upon arrest and longer sentences (Pettit and Western, 2004). These policies led to a major increase in federal prison populations (Pettit and Western, 2004). Another similar “war” was also started around this time, the war on crime, which reflected a shift away from a rehabilitative philosophy of corrections to one of “crime prevention through the incapacitation of troublesome populations” (Pettit and Western, 2004, p. 154). This already points to an important part of this issue, of marginalized minorities, an issue that will be examined further in a later paragraph. Tonry writes about five possible reasons for the high incarceration rate of the US, the first being higher crime rates and crime trends, which this essay already examined (Tonry, 1999). The next two, public opinion and partisan politics in the US (Tonry, 1999), could very well explain the political trends of the war on drugs and the war on crime, which started in the 70s. Public opinion does reflect the idea of being harsh on crime and drugs, and surveys usually find people regarding crime and drugs as central problems, and people usually feel that sentencing is too lenient and that punishment must be tougher (Tonry, 1999). From this perspective, one could simply argue that public officials have merely respected this will (Tonry, 1999). But this would miss the point that people usually believe sentences to be much softer than they are, and they believe that crime rates are rising when in fact they are falling (Tonry, 1999). This is important as it shows that many politicians tough on crime are simply claiming they are following the public’s will, when in fact this will, and concern is only created by the media’s and politicians' focus on crime. Now, this essay will take a closer look at the focus of politicians on crime and partisan politics. Crime came first on to the American political agendas when Republican candidate Barry Goldwater raised it as a partisan issue in his unsuccessful 1964 presidential campaign (Tonry, 1999). Before this time crime and criminal justice policy were left mainly to practitioners and technocrats, but as it became more of a political issue, criminal policy started to be influenced more by rhetoric than substance (Tonry, 1999). During the Nixon and Reagan era, Republican strategists focused on mainly three wedge issues of welfare, crime, and affirmative action (Tonry, 1999). However, with the politicization of this issue, the problem became that the issue of crime and substance abused was simplified and used as a political tool, and this all led to the adoption of “ham-fisted and poorly considered policies” (Tonry, 1999, p. 427), such as broadly written mandatory sentencing laws, three-strikes laws, or federal sentencing guidelines (Tonry, 1999). The issue with this political discourse was as well that with these sorts of sound bite politics where one side represented being against crime and the other being for crime made it difficult for politicians to fight against these ideas (Tonry, 1999). It would be also a mistake not to look at the impact of race and racism on the incarceration rate of the US, as minority groups such as black Americans tend to be overrepresented in the prison system (Alexander, 2010). Michelle Alexander writes in her book about mass incarceration being in the US a new way for the government to control African Americans (Alexander, 2010). She argues that the institutions used to control black Americans like slavery did not die rather they transformed to better but still bad institutions, such as the Jim Crow laws and segregation, which ended up transforming into mass incarceration, which she calls the New Jim Crow (Alexander, 2010). The idea that criminal and drug policy was influenced by race and racism is further enforced by John Ehrlichman who was President Nixon’s domestic policy chief, and who reportedly admitted in 1994 that they were lying about the drugs during the start of the war on drugs, and that their main reasoning was to associate hippies and black people with drugs so that they could vilify and arrest them (Lopez, 2016). The failure of the war on drugs is further represented by the fact that although the harshest federal drug laws were only enacted by 1986 and 1988, drug use was on a steady decline since 1980, meaning if the true goal of the war on drugs was to lower the usage of drugs than “the war was being won a decade before it was declared” (Tonry 1999, p. 432). In the United States, young black men are now more likely to go to prison than to college in their lifetime (Alexander, 2010). High incarceration rates in black neighborhoods pose a further problem, as the effect of harsh sentences and laws have a differing amount of deterrence on different communities (Blumstein, 1998). In middle class neighborhoods, these laws certainly do have a great power of deterrence, but in communities with high incarceration rates, where people have not been properly socialized against crime, such as in high crime black neighborhoods, these sentences can be counterproductive in deterrence (Blumstein, 1998). The stigma ex-prisoners face is an important factor as well and is sometimes called the period of invisible punishment (Alexander, 2010). This stigma keeps convicted offenders from ever truly integrating into mainstream society, and many offenders do end up back in prison, as a result, captured in a “circuit of perpetual marginality” (Alexander, 2010, p. 181). These would lead to the conclusion of a sort of snowball effect in high crime communities such as many black communities, where high incarceration rates following the war on drugs only ever led to it being even higher. To sum up, this essay has narrowed down the beginning of the unusually high incarceration rate in the US to the 1970s and the beginning of the war on drugs. It has argued that the high number of prisoners compared to other countries is not due to higher crime rates. Rather it is due to decades of public policy decisions, that shared the aim of being harsh on crime and drugs, if not necessarily for the benefit of the communities most affected rather for political and racial reasons. This essay pointed out as well how black communities were disproportionately affected by these policies and shined a light on some of the adverse effects this has had on the communities in question. In conclusion, the damage of high incarceration rates seem evident, and the failure of the war on drugs seems clear as well, so the United States has to have a good look on these policies and discourse needs to be had, to determine if these policies and attitudes are truly the right way forward.