INCARCERATION OF PRISONERS
SITUATION
U.S, has more people in jail than any other country
Recovery for crime & prison combo is difficult
Need to point to successes in rehab & new life for prisoners
Drug related sentences are most difficult to get rid of.
SOLUTIONS
Stop imprisoning people for drug use;
What happens in prison determines integration into society;
Determine who can be rehabbed and who should be confined.
Use of imprisonment to give prisoners options- Change being one
Where do we need to go from here?
In particular, start by:
Eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and cutting back on excessively lengthy sentences;
Shifting resources to community-based prevention and treatment for substance abuse.
Investing in interventions to that promote strong youth development and respond to delinquency.
Examining and addressing the policies and practices, conscious or not, that contribute to racial inequity at every stage of the justice system.
Removing barriers that make it harder for individuals with criminal records to turn their lives around.
What Needed to happen?
Use failures provided as roadmap for policy priorities & legal reform
Ongoing need to decarcerate and end the era of mass incarceration
Includes rolling back extreme sentences
Ensuring that decarceration efforts center racial justice as a goal
Promoting voting rights for all regardless of conviction history.
Some say -That prisons and jails are largely incompetent, inhumane,
SEZ:
Executive Director Amy Fettig penned an essay in the University of Miami Law Review
Argues that federal, state and local government response to the COVID-19 epidemic is wrong;
That prisons and jails was largely incompetent, inhumane,
And contrary to sound public health policy, resulting in preventable death and suffering for both incarcerated people and corrections staff.
STATS:
Since 1980 Americans incarcerated for drug offenses skyrocketed from 40,900 to 430,926 in 2019.
SOURCES
The Sentencing Project -https://www.sentencingproject.org/issues/incarceration/
Can Covid 19 Teach use How to End Mass Incarceration?
