Mass incarceration is the unprecedented amount of people that the United States has imprisoned over the past couple decades. Locking up large numbers of American citizens for small nonviolent offenses, jeopardizing their ability to provide for themselves, and taking away their political power is both immoral and contrary to everything that America stands for. There are five major adverse effects of mass incarceration. The first is the extreme difficulty in finding a well-paying job, adequate shelter, and access to loans. The second is the negative effects on children growing up in fatherless homes, especially male children. The third is the removal of ex-convicts right to vote. The fourth is the racial disparities in prison populations and the targeting of minority communities. The fifth is the extreme cost of locking up such a large amount of people and the burden that it places on the American taxpayer. 

There is no such thing as just serving your time in the United States, every prison sentence carries silent punishments. The most prominent of these silent punishments is your criminal record, once you have a felony on your permanent record your whole life changes. Obtaining a well-paying job with a previous felony is nearly impossible and if you lie on your application you will immediately be fired if the company finds out. This often has the effect of pushing people back into a life of crime which is why we have such a high recidivism rate in the United States. You have to provide for yourself and your family one way or another and often times minimum wage doesn’t cut it. Limiting people’s options to either a low paying job or criminal activity only continues the current cycle of mass incarceration (cite).

An often less known silent punishment of having previously been incarcerated is the struggle to obtain housing. Many apartment complexes’ will deny housing to someone with a felony on their record and with limited job opportunities often time buying a house is just not an option. Even my student apartment complex I am living in next year ran a background check to make sure I had never been convicted of a felony. Along with this a previous felony will most likely disqualify you if you apply for public housing. Often time people just getting out of prison are the ones who need access to public housing the most so preventing them from obtaining it is counterproductive to what public housing is trying to accomplish.

A third silent punishment is the inability to receive federal loans. If you have any type of drug conviction on your criminal record you are barred from receiving student loans. It does not matter whether it is a cocaine trafficking charge or a simple possession of marijuana charge you are instantly disqualified from receiving student aid. Once again this law makes very little sense, a college education is a key component to getting out of a life of crime and selling drugs. Its laws like these that only continue the cycle of mass incarceration.

An often not talked about effect of mass incarceration is the fact that it breaks up millions of families all over the United States. More often than not it is the father who is removed from the home, this has led to many children across America to grow up without a strong male role model in the house. This can have devastating effects of growing children especially when it comes to adolescent males.

Studies show that lack of a father is most harmful when it happens before the age of 5 “For children who become father-absent prior to the age of five, the overall effects of paternal loss seem to be profound and long-term. This is especially true for male children.” (Beaty, Vol 30, issue 120). The most common effects of growing up in a home without father for male adolescents are lower self-esteem, lower sense of masculinity, and poor social adjustment.            “ dysfunctional effects due to paternal deprivation both in masculinity of their self-concept and in their poor peer adjustment.” (Beaty, Vol. 30, issue 120). When we talk about the effects of mass incarceration we must not only consider those who are incarcerated but also those who are affected by somebody being incarcerated. When we lock up an extremely large number of people for nonviolent crimes we are also affecting the lives of an even larger amount of people that they are close too, this needs to be taken into account when constructing penal legislation.

One of the most insidious effects of mass incarceration is the fact that ex-cons do not have the right to vote. Once you are convicted of a felony all of your political power is taken away by the state. This is troubling for two reasons, one because Americas political system depends on people showing up to the polls and two because its means that incarceration can be used as a political tool to hush the voices of political dissenters. In order for American democracy to work properly every citizen needs to be equally represented, this cannot happen of you take away the right to vote from people who were previously convicted of felonies “Felon disenfranchisement hinders the democratic process by undermining equitable representation of citizens' interests, a critical component of a functioning democracy.” (Siegel, pg. 89). 

The second reason is even more worrisome as it has already happened once in American history and could easily happen again in the wrong man gets into office. During the 1960’s the Nixon administration had two main political enemies, hippies and minority groups. Knowing that your right to vote is removed after being convicted of a felony the Nixon administration criminalized common behaviors of these two groups and therefore marginalized them politically. There is strong evidence to show that these laws were selectively enforced as drug use among whites and African Americans is fairly consistent however African Americans are far more likely to be arrested. The disenfranchisement of convicted felons needs to end immediately as we cannot have our elected officials incentivized to use incarceration for political gain.

When talking about our judicial system the racial disparities in the prison population are a major concern. As I mentioned in the paragraph above although whites and African Americans use drugs at a similar rate African Americans are much more likely to be arrested. It’s not just drug related crimes either its criminal activity in general “Though they comprise only 12% of the U.S. population, Blacks are nearly 40% of the nation’s inmates” (Hetey and Eberhardt, pg. 1950). This disparity in the prison population is troubling especially when considering that ex-convicts are deprived of the right to vote as I mentioned in the paragraph above. This disparity in the prison population means that a large part of a minority community is unable to vote and is politically marginalized. 

The effect of mass incarceration that is felt by every single American citizen is the extremely high budgetary cost of incarcerating so many people.  It costs an average of $31,286 to incarcerate an inmate for one year. The vast majority of inmates held in federal prison are there on nonviolent drug offenses. This is billions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer money that could be spent on rebuilding our infrastructure or educating our citizens. What makes this even worse is that many of the taxpayers that are paying for this mass imprisonment don’t even agree with it! According to the latest polling data 58% of American citizens are in favor of legalizing marijuana, while at the same time they are paying for hundreds of thousands of people to be locked in a cage on marijuana charges. 

To fully understand the current effects off mass incarceration we must first know its background and how it came to be standard policy in the United States. The first step towards mass incarceration took place during the Nixon administration. During that time period the administration had two major political enemies; the anti-war hippies, and minorities. The Nixon administration knew they couldn’t make it illegal to either be against the war or black so they had to find another way to diminish the political dissent, they did this by criminalizing common behaviors of their political enemies. By starting the war on drugs they could begin to lock up anti-war and minority groups in mass. Not only does this action have the intimidation factor but the vast majority of states do not allow convicted felons to vote so by locking them up you take away any political power that could be used against you. The Regan administration knew this as well as the war on drugs exploded under Regan spending an increasingly large amount of money locking people up for nonviolent drug offenses. 

Just as it looked like mass incarceration had reached its peak; in 1978 the supreme court ruled that campaign donations equal free speech which allowed lobbying groups like the private prison industry, big pharma, and the alcohol industry to donate extraordinary amounts of cash to certain politicians to make sure the war on drugs continued going strong. The private prison industry views mass incarceration as a key economic policy to their success, they literally make more profit the more people are locked up! That has got to be the most flawed incentive structure have ever seen. The pharmaceutical industry views certain recreational drugs with medical properties (specifically marijuana but also MDMA) as competition to their drugs. The alcohol industry for obvious reasons views recreational drugs as competition to the recreational drug they sell. Incentive structures that benefit off keeping drugs illegal combined with the ability to donate extreme amount of money to political campaigns created the perfect storm for the war on drugs to go full speed ahead. 

This new influx of lobbying money led to the creation of three strikes laws and mandatory minimum sentences. Three strike laws are laws that state once a person is convicted of a third felony the sentence must be significantly increased leaving the judge no judicial discretion to decide how long the prison term should be. Mandatory minimums on the other hand are laws which state that for certain crimes the prison sentence must be a certain number of years, similarly to three strikes laws they also leave the judge no discretion to decide how many years are justified for the crime committed. All of this combined led to the United States of America to incarcerate more people per capita than any other nation on earth. Incarcerating 716 per every 100,000 people the “land of the free” tops the list beating out the second most incarcerating country, Russia, by over 100 people per 100,000.

In order to combat mass incarceration many changes need to be made. The simplest solution to this problem is to start releasing nonviolent drug offenders. The article “Is This the First Step in Undoing Mass Incarceration” Talks about the release of 6000 of federal nonviolent drugs offenders in order to reduce mass incarceration. To put this in perspective the average cost of incarceration per inmate for one year is $31,286 so this move will save approximately $187,716,000 worth of taxpayer money! Just imagine how many schools can be built with one hundred eighty-seven million seven hundred sixteen thousand dollars! On top of all this there was a study done on previous groups of early released nonviolent inmates that showed inmates released early do not have a higher recidivism rate than other inmates. All this taken into account the move to start releasing nonviolent offenders seems like a no brainer. 

Changes also need to be made in the laws governing political contributions. If we continue to allow large corporations which value profit over everything else to make giant campaign contributions to politicians much progress on this front will be halted or at least stalled. Corporations are beholden to their shareholders by law to maximize profit over everything else, if there is a way for them to increase their profit margins they will do it no matter the human consequences. Also the private prison industry is an industry that should never exist in the first place. There is a reason that for much of human history there was no such thing as a private prison. Once you make locking human beings in cages profitable you then incentivize these companies to try to lock up as many people as possible justice and common sense be damned. Like I stated earlier corporation are required by law to make as much money as they can for their shareholders, this means that private prisons are required by law to attempt to push for laws that over criminalize and over punish. This is an industry that should simply not be allowed to exist due to its inherently flawed incentive structure.

Those whole believe that the war on drugs should be continued and that no changes should be made to the current law use three main arguments. The first argument is that more people will use drugs on the job and put other civilians in harm’s way, for example that a school bus driver or pilot will use drugs on the job. I believe this is false because people that would use drugs on the job if they were legal are already using drugs on the job, also for certain professions you can regulate it. Airline pilots for example are not allowed to drink two days prior to a flight and alcohol is perfectly legal, you don’t see an epidemic of drunk pilots do you? 

The second argument is that the crime rate will increase, this is almost perfectly false as the high crime rate is the result of drugs being illegal. During the prohibition era the Mafia took control of alcohol sale and as a result became incredibly powerful and the crime rate skyrocketed, we are seeing the same thing today with the drug cartel. Legal corporations handle their disputes in the courtroom with suits not with guns in the street. 

The third argument is that drugs will be more accessible to youth if they are legal. This is also false as anyone who smoked weed in high school can tell you drugs are much easier for youth to obtain than alcohol for the sole reason that drug dealers don’t ID. Obviously if drugs become legal they will be regulated and have a legal age limit for consumption.

Many of you might be asking yourselves right now “who cares” I’ve never been convicted of a crime so this doesn’t affect me. Well first of all it does affect you as I explained earlier as taxpayers an insane portion of our money goes to incarceration nonviolent offenders. Second off all as a human being you must empathize for those serving unimaginable prison terms for nonviolent drug offenses. The article "Here Are 7 Americans Sentenced to Die in Prison for Nonviolent Drug Crimes” details the personal testimonials of seven individuals who are serving life sentences without the chance of parole for nonviolent drug offenses. The offenses range from simple possession of marijuana to cocaine trafficking, neither of which should carry even close to a life sentence. As a human with a cerebral cortex capable of empathy and compassion you must look at this and know that it is unjust.
