Incarceration Rate in the United States

With the United States having a higher prison incarceration rate than the countries we considered autocratic such as Iran, China and Germany one would hope that the War on Drugs implemented in the 1970s would soon come to an end, again one would hope. From the unjust use of prisoners set to help the community with a rate of pay starting at $1 an hour, to the fact that mass incarceration not only involves the millions of people in our prisons but also their families. Richard Nixon engraved this thought into white Americans head that the different usages of the same drug should result in different sentences for black people versus white people. He, on the other hand, is slowly creating a stage of genocide.

    The United States incarceration rate is so high compared to the countries we see as repressive such as Iran, Cuba, and Russia for example. That reason being they do not see a reason to imprison everyone who breaks a crime, they punish to the extent that is needed. There should be no reason someone gets a 5-year charge for petty theft; our facilities and money are being drained when people who are not a threat to society could simply partake in community service or pay a fine for their crime. When you imprison our minorities, they are essentially being degraded to second-class citizens although the image of a new lifestyle is advertised for people once they are released from jail they do not have the same opportunities they once did, from getting their voting rights taken away, not being able to take out student loans for school, and job restrictions.

    The use of the prisoners in California to fight wildfires is a modern-day example of legalized slavery. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations ensure all inmates volunteer on their own behalf, they are put through a process of evaluation to determine whether they are going to be proactive members who will cooperate fully. $1 a day when dealing with active fires, and $2 a day when not, also earning time off their sentences however on average in California firefighters make $33.26 a day and that can range all the way up to $50.00. So, although it is understood that they are volunteering to do this task it does not change the fact that the United States has the highest rate of mass incarceration in the world. The millions of people in jail due to institutionalized classism and racism and our government saves millions of dollars by paying, the prisoners who are the same people putting their lives on the line, pennies.

    Richard Nixon lied on his platform of presidency because the only thing stopping him from winning his election was the number of those who were against war and black people. Knowing it was not illegal to be black or against war Nixon convinced people that drug use was the number one issue in America, took the usage of heroin in black people and the marijuana use for the nonconformist and criminalized it to the point where it destroyed society's view of them as a whole. Then when Ronald Reagan took office in 1980 the prison population was doubled when he left eight years later, from 330,000 to over 627,000 and that population mostly being people of color.

    According to the 13th amendment, the War on Drugs institution was the highest record in American history to contribute to the amount of enslaved people. Leading to the United States budget of almost 3 trillion dollars the mass incarceration surplus did not last as long as hoped because when Barack Obama, America's first African-American president, was elected America was revived from an economic crash worse than the Great Depression stock market crash. Police brutality plus the imprisonment of young black men is contributing to the population control of African-Americans and it is not admitted that police brutality is a problem, so how is one to confront an issue that is not named. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Declaration of Independence, 1776. After 126 years of these inhumane acts toward people of color our founders decided to say enough was enough.

    Though it will take years to reverse what the African-American population has endured, paying volunteer inmates a dollar an hour to fight deadly wildfires, having a higher incarceration rate than China, a country with over a billion citizens, and still implementing this fear of drugs being a big issue in America from someone who lied about the dangerousness of drugs 48 years ago, America has yet to make improvement towards a better lifestyle for African Americans. Our day of reckoning will be coming soon, Slavery began in 1619 and God said his people will come onto strange land and be in bondage for 400 years.

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