The criminal justice system holds almost 2.3 million people in jails and prisons. These jails and prisons are racially disproportionate. On the federal bureau of Prisons it gives statistics to show who is incarcerated. 59,744 African Americans are incarcerated, 90,620 Whites are incarcerated, 3,918 Native Americans are incarcerated, and 2,325 asians are incarcerated. As you can see there are more whites incarcerated than any other race, but in america there are 236.5 million white people in America, and 41.99 million African American people in america. Even though it looks like there are more whites incarcerated there are not because there are more white people in America than African Americans. This is what makes prisons racially disproportionate.
The prison population has gotten higher and higher and it started in the 1970’s. This started with the War on drugs. In 1971 President Nixon declared the war on drugs and he dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug control agencies and pushed through measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants. However this was not the only reason the prison population began to increase. “The presidency of Ronald Reagan marked the start of a long period of skyrocketing rates of incarceration, largely thanks to his unprecedented expansion of the drug war. The number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug law offenses increased from 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997.” President Reagan created an anti-drug campaign with the slogan “just say no”. In 1985 America saw drug abuse as their number one problem. Police were to patrol areas with high drug problems more frequently and arrest anyone who had drugs, sold drugs, or were involved with drugs. This lead to the increase of prison population because the president wanted all drugs to be illegal and he wanted people who were involved with drugs to be criminalized for it. He thought that if there was a harsher punishment for drugs then people would stop doing them and selling them. This was not the case and it lead to a huge increase in prison population especially for lower class people.
Another law that has made the prison population increase is the three strikes law. In 1994 California voters enacted the three strike law in response to the tragic murder of Kimber Reynolds and Polly Klaas. The basic saying was ” three strikes and you’re out”. The law imposed a life sentence for almost any crime, no matter how minor it was, if the defendant had two prior convictions defined as serious or violent by the California Penal Code. This law increased prison populations immensely because after that third strike you were going to prison no matter what.
The prison population continues to grow and it causes environmental issues that need to be solved.
