Mass Incarceration Forum

Despite modest declines over the past decade, the United States, as of year-end 2023, ranked fourth in the world behind only Rwanda, Cuba, and El Salvador in its incarceration rate. This translated into roughly 1 in 40 adults serving some form of formal punishment. Prison population explosions have been a trademark of our history ever since the latter parts of the 20th century, largely attributed to passage of stringent sentencing policies designed to incarcerate for prolonged periods even low-level offenders. Many have termed this period the Just Deserts, Warehousing or Mass Incarceration era. However labeled, it is beyond dispute that the United States has witnessed an unprecedented increase in the number of people serving extended prison terms, and that as a nation, we eclipse nearly all others in terms of the number of people we punish. Debate persists over the crime control effects of mass incarceration policies, with some arguing that decreases in offense rates can be directly accounted for by these legislative acts, while others counter these assertions. For this discussion board, the focus will not be so much on the potential offense reduction effects of mass incarceration, but rather, on the impacts these policies can have on the families and social communities of those incarcerated. Imagine the relatives of those who have just been sentenced to a lengthy prison term. How can this affect them? If the person incarcerated was the sole financial provider, then how will the family cope? How will children respond to this? How can and will broader communities be affected by the imprisonment of its residents? In addition to these questions, and for this discussion board, consider also why legislative statutes in the form of mandatory minimum, determinate, and truth-in-sentencing policies were codified in the first place. What preceded these policies? Why were they enacted? Ultimately, why did our government representatives adopt these rapacious sentencing policies? For this discussion board then, consider these two central points: the effects of mass incarceration on the communities of those incarcerated, and the reason these policies were passed in the first place. You will be asked for this discussion board to retrieve at least two (2) published and peer-reviewed articles (that have not already been provided in class) on the separate topics of mass incarceration effects, and the causes leading to mass imprisonment. Please address the above questions when drafting your replies. Further, as part of your assignment, you will need to: A)-Include actual, PDF copies of the article(s) as part of your submission. You may upload them within the forum itself; B)-Cite a direct sentence from the required CRJ-5150 textbook in your response that will supplement what you wrote on this topic. Immediately next to the cited sentence in parentheses, provide the precise page number, line number, and paragraph number, along with the location of this sentence on the page. Use this direct quotation from the book, again, to supplement what you write in regards to the summary of your article(s). C)-Cite at least one direct sentence from at least ONE article you retrieve for this post, and next to the cited sentence in parentheses, provide the precise page number, line number, and paragraph number, along with the location of this sentence on the page. Your final response should be between 500 and 600 words in length. This is a strictly enforced maximum word count, with every word over resulting in a point deduction.