The purpose of government is to establish and enforce rules and guidelines so that there is some sort of ethical structure for citizens to follow. Without government, there would be no way to enforce punishment and deter ethical transgressions such as killing someone or stealing. Just as a small child would be punished by its parents for a wrongdoing, people who break the law in America are punished by the government and put into a jail or prison as punishment. Unfortunately, the U.S. justice system is not as sympathetic to a criminal as a parent would be to its child. It does not take into account circumstantial evidence or the kind of person the offender is, and thus, it often unfairly punishes to the fullest extent of the law. Although reprimanding wrongdoings is necessary to keep order in society, the U.S. government often gives unreasonably long sentences to criminals that are not a big danger to their community (STATE of Louisiana v. Bernard W. NOBLE). Prisons are supposed to be a place of rehabilitation where a criminal is isolated from the general public in order to reflect on the actions that put them there and undergo programs that help them learn from their mistakes. Sadly, instead of focusing on the aspect of rehabilitating criminals, the U.S. justice system is more worried about getting and keeping criminals out of their communities by locking them up for extensive periods of time. The 'land of the free,' is slowly becoming 'the land of the imprisoned' because of all the strict sentencing laws and lack of successful rehabilitation programs. In order for America to reduce the amount of people in prison and reduce criminal activity across the nation it must change the ways it goes about punishing criminals and focus more on rehabilitation.

Since the 1970's, the United States prison system has grown by 500% and now holds 2.2 million people (The Sentencing Project 2015). In the late 1960's there was a large increase in crime rates in the U.S. while the murder rate increased from 4.0 to a high 10.2 (Pinker). Paired with the racial tensions of the civil rights movement and prison riots like the Attica prison rebellion, this increase in crime caused the American public to feel unsafe which caused the government to become more strict on crime (Mauer). As a response to the public concern, President Nixon declared 'the war on drugs' in 1971 and started passing legislation that punished convicted criminals more severely. 

After President Nixon declared the war on drugs in 1971 states quickly followed his lead by making laws to enforce more strict punishment on criminals. The first state to enforce legislation was New York with the Rockefeller law in 1973. The New York Rockefeller law established a zero tolerance policy for drug addicts and dealers and called for a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison for offenders (NPR). The Rockefeller law was the first to establish a determinate sentence for criminals and was very controversial due to the fact it was the first of its kind. After the Rockefeller law was passed, the idea of zero tolerance in the punishment of criminals spread quickly and soon other states were making similar laws. 

With the advent of the Regan administration, the war on drugs increased in size as well as the movement towards determinate sentences. With crack cocaine becoming a popular drug and people overdosing often, people began to assume recreational drugs to be bad and therefore should be illegal. As the first lady, Nancy Regan made an initiative to go out in public and speak of the dangers of drug use and coined the catchphrase "just say no".  In 1986 the Anti-Drug abuse act established a federal minimum of five years for moderate drug offenders (A Brief History of the Drug War). According to criminologists Allen Beck and Alfred Blumstein, the U.S. incarceration rate tripled in 15 years from 1980 to 1996; their studies show that 88% of the increase in the prison population was caused by the new strict policies adopted by the U.S. (51% of the 88% due to a greater chance of being sentenced, 37% due to longer average sentences), whereas only 12% of the increase was caused by changes in crime rates (Blumstein and Beck). Following the Anti-Drug abuse act of 1986, many states started to adopt the idea of the 'third strike law' which mandates a minimum sentence of 13.3 years to life for third time drug offenders. By 2000, nearly half of the states in the U.S. had adopted some form of the third strike law (Mauer).

Although policies such as the third strikes law, mandatory minimums, and longer sentences are aimed to help the community, they do not take into account circumstantial evidence and thus often convict people too harshly. The case of Bernard Noble is a great example of how the U.S. government, because of its strict laws and unforgiving manner, often punishes criminals too harshly without taking into account the circumstantial evidence such as the kind of person he/she was and how they went about being arrested. In May 2011 Bernard Noble, a 49-year-old African American man from New Orleans was caught with two joints weighing to three grams, and was charged for thirteen and a third years to federal prison. Noble was a good man; he graduated high school and has a steady job history since, he is the loving father to seven children and has not ever missed a child support payment, and was even the owner of two small businesses. But how and why was Noble sentenced to thirteen years for a small possession charge?

Earlier in 1997 and again in 2003, Noble was charged with possession of a small amount of cocaine. Although it had been 8 years since his last drug charge and even though he was being caught with a much less serious substance, Noble was convicted to serve thirteen and a third years in prison as a result of the third strike law. 

Originally, the trial judge found the third strike law to be excessive due to the fact that Noble had proven to be a good an productive member of society so he only sentenced Noble to 5 years in prison. However, the decision was repealed three times by the Orleans Parish District Attorney and finally the Supreme Court ruled to overturn the original Judges reduction of Bernard's sentence and charge him to the fullest extent of the third strike law (STATE of Louisiana v. Bernard W. NOBLE). The punishment given to Noble is clearly too harsh for 3 grams of marijuana especially considering that there are areas of the U.S. where marijuana is illegal. 

Because of the rise in the prison population after the changes in legislation from the 1970-90's, state and federal prisons came to be extremely overcrowded. This overcrowding causes tension among inmates, and psychological stress for the inmates and prison workers, increased prison violence, and poor conditions in prisons (Baier and Fuhrmann). Overcrowding forces prisons to have cell-sharing policies (even in high level security prisons), which can instigate conflict. According to a study done by Justice Quarterly for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, it is proven that overcrowding isn't a direct cause of prison violence. However, overcrowding causes prion guards and management to have less power over the incarcerated and thus they are not able to monitor the prisoners as easily and make sure that they are adhering to the rules. This lack of surveillance and enforcement allows for prisoners to get away with violent acts more frequently so it happens more often. Also, the prison overcrowding can cause nonviolent offenders to be locked up right next to violent offenders. Imagine being sent to prison for possession of marijuana and ending up in a cell with a man who has killed somebody. The mental stress of such situations causes unease in the minds of nonviolent offenders and they often succumb to violent acts in prison out of fear that others will hurt them in prison (Baier and Fuhrmann).

As a result of the overcrowding of prisons, state and federal governments turn to private prison corporations to house their criminals. Right off the bat, this is a question of constitutionality because the government should be the one to regulate the punishment and rehabilitation of its lawbreakers. Since the inception of the first private prison in Kentucky, the private prison industry has grown to make up 23% of all state and federal prisons (Kirchoff). Currently, private prisons make billions of dollars by providing labor from the prisoners to big companies for services such as making clothes, licence plates, and answering phones in a call center. Since the 1990's the CCA's (Corrections Corporation of America) profit margins have increased by 400% while the crime rate went down 11% (Kirchoff). 

The documentary Angola for Life: Rehabilitation and Reform Inside the Louisiana State Penitentiary, produced by The Atlantic shows what the modern private prison labor system is really like. The film takes us to the Louisiana state penitentiary, which used to be an old slave plantation, but is now a field in which the prisoners work against their will for a measly two cents per hour (Benns). The fields are scattered with African American men and the fact that it used to be an old plantation goes to show that the government systematically reinvented slavery. Many ask how it is constitutional for the government to do such a thing after the passing of the 13th amendment, which outlawed slavery. However, the first section of the 13th amendment states that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States," which establishes the ability for prison labor systems to be constitutional despite the obvious ethical transgressions they make in forcing labor upon someone they do not provide well for or compensate properly (Benns).

Many of the different aspects of prison life infringe on being unconstitutional, but it is difficult to identify and change these factors due to the fact that the Prison Litigation Reform Act suppresses the complaints and suggestions made by prisoners to the government. Reforms prisoners would want to make would be on things such as improvements in hygiene and harsher punishments for jail rape offenders (Camp). Prisoners have very little ability to defend themselves when their rights are being infringed upon. The PLRA makes it impossible for prisoners to be served justice because it says that the federal court does not have to hear cases of complaints of prisoners (Hill).

Shown by the large increases in prison population, changes in legislation, forced prison labor and terrible conditions of prisons, it is evident that America needs to adjust its policies in order to change the way it goes about sentencing criminals. All of these factors point to prove the theory of America's Prison Industrial Complex.  The Prison Industrial Complex is the term coined to describe the relationship between the growing rate of incarceration (specifically among African American and Hispanics) and the government's roles in prison privatization for their own greedy purposes. When prison privatization came to be, the goods produced by the prisoners were usually goods for the military sold to the federal government. It would make sense that the government and companies producing the product to remain in the U.S. but with competing manufacturing prices in other countries such as S.E. Asia and India it was a tough conflict. With the advent of the private prison system, it allowed the companies a cheap local alternative to paying the high wages that they normally would in the U.S. and they get to keep production domestic so they can have quicker access to it and more control of it (Thompson). This was a perfect compromise for both the government and the companies because they both benefitted from it.

Thus the argument is, that the United States implemented harsher laws on crime from the 1980's forward in order to put more prisoners into the workforce in the private prison system. They did this because it was directly benefiting them by providing them with cheaper prices on military equipment. When more people are being locked up and taking jobs that normal working class citizens could be doing (such as farming or furniture manufacturing). Although this is a good financial benefit for the corporations using the prison labor, this system hurts the middle class because it causes the growth in the gap between the rich and the poor due to the increase of people being locked up for prison labor. 

In order to solve these problems that the prison industrial complex poses, the state and federal governments must enact legislation to change the way they go about punishing criminals by taking more accountability to circumstantial evidence and instituting alternate types of reform programs. Many states such as Mississippi, South Carolina and Georgia are becoming more relaxed on their mandatory minimums of criminals and treatment of drug offenders (Lawrence). In 2010 South Carolina, one of the more right winged states, passed laws that offered different diversion programs and types of treatment of certain small criminal offenses passed on probationary monitoring which shows hope for chance. As a result of the passing of these laws, South Carolina has seen a 6.3% decrease in violent crime and a 17.9% decrease in recidivism: the rate at which prisoners go back to their illegal ways when they get out of prison (Lawrence). This shows that states are making an effort to change the problems with our prison system but more reform needs to be passed on a federal level in order to stop the prison industrial complex and its negative effects.

the U.S. prison population has increased not because of a change in crime or the people, it has changed because of a shift in governmental policy to become greedier with the ways American corporations were sourcing labor. Entire racial communities suffered at the expense of this policy and started stereotypes that caused African Americans and Hispanics to be singled out more often than Caucasian people by law enforcement (A Brief History of the Drug War). Institutions like Sing Sing correctional facility in New York, pave the way for what incarceration in America should look like. Sing Sing usually gives shorter sentences in which the inmates get a college degree while performing several hours of community service per week in the surrounding areas. Inmates also undergo therapy with councilors in order to get a plan for what they want to do when they get out of prison and how they plan on going about doing that. Sing Sing has a zero percent rate of recidivism and hopefully, with legislation passed from the federal and state governments in years to come, this type of personal rehabilitation can occur across the nation in order to make a zero percent rate of recidivism a more normal thing.

