Mass Incarceration
The population the the United States only makes up about 5% of the global population, yet the U.S prison system accounts for nearly 25% of the world's prison population. With these numbers, it becomes even clearer that the United States has the most amount of prisoners in the world. However, this phenomena began in the 1970s with Nixon's ambiguous phrasing of "war on crime" that catapulted the prison population sevenfold to the present number of 2.3 million prisoners. Unfortunately this crack down on drugs and crime did not come from a place of interest for all American people, rather the protection of the supremacy of upper middle class and wealthy white at the expense of working class BIPOC. The system essentially has created new rhetoric to keep Black and Latinos especially in positions of subordination and even slavery to the state under the guise of public security.
The war on drugs
Nixon's original identification of war on drugs in 1971 transferred the focus on drugs as the number one public enemy. However, this became even more of a focus under Reagan in the 1980s in which inner city children were being targeted as troublemakers increasing the incarceration rates in inner cities. This was exacerbated by new harsher criminalization of crack which was punished much more severely than the upper class suburban drug of cocaine. By implementing harsher penalties on what was considered a lower class drug, poverty and race were both being criminalized and their respective demographics were exponentially present in America's prisons and jails. The peak and further fuel to this fire came from Bill Clinton's 1994 Crime Bill only funded the prison system with even more policing in working class urban areas and created harsher penalties for drug crime. A person could now spend their entire life in prison without parole simply for possession of crack.
President Richard Nixon officially declared a "war on drugs" in 1971, two years after calling for the creation of a national drug policy. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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Timeline of War on Drugs visual. Lane, Ashley. “40 Years of the War on Drugs.” Visual.ly, The Man-Eater, 4 Aug. 2020, visual.ly/community/Infographics/politics/40-years-war-drugs.
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The war on drugs has a long historic backdrop with it, including relations with Latin America. This timeline from NPR provides further context to the issues the rhetoric and legislation has created.
The Prison-Industrial Complex
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In a capitalist system, everything can become for profit. The prison system is no different. Like the military-industrial complex phenomenon during the first half of the 19th century, the idea that the expansion of the prison population was caused by the growth of for profit prisons and its private suppliers became known as the prison-industrial complex. When there are industries that are profiting out of keeping large swaths of people locked up, who also lobby and therefore have power in our government, creates a hard situation for divestment of policing funds over to other community organizations that could help regulate safety in their respective communities. Some of these companies are even functioning in other public institutions such as Aramark in public and private universities.
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The Netflix documentary "The 13th" draws light to the systemic racism and the criminalization of poverty while benefiting wealthy corporations and keeping white supremacy in place with the prison system.
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