According to United Nations Human Development Report of 2015, the U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Our prison system incarcerates at a rate of 716 people per 100,000. This number is greater than the sum rates of the top seven countries on the Human Development Index. In other words, we incarcerate at a higher rate than the top seven developed countries in the world combined.
With this information, one must ask, why are U.S. incarceration rates so high? And what should we, Christians, as individual citizens and as a nation, do about it?
There are multiple reasons why so many people are daily incarcerated in the U.S. At the forefront of these reasons lies systemic racism. According to The Atlantic, African American men growing up in the 1970s had a 70% chance of being incarcerated during the prison booms of the 1980s and 1990s. Let that sink in for a minute: a 70% chance of being incarcerated. In 2010, black men in the U.S. were six times as likely as white men to be incarcerated in federal, state and local jails (2013 Pew Research Center Study).
You may now wonder, what are the repercussions of such blatant racial disparity? The answer: 1.2 million African American children in the U.S today now have a parent in prison. Children with an incarcerated parent are at greater risk for diminished school achievement, behavioral problems, depression, and acting out (The Atlantic). Any education major at Houghton will tell you that these factors directly affect the classroom environment, making it harder for children to progress in school. Yet, restorative aid has been withheld from a marginalized group of Americans whose liberty was never fully established. Racism still exists and it runs deep within our “justice” system.
Moving on from these staggering facts of systematic racism, I now call the reader to take a look at how offenders are judged, once they have been charged. Regardless of race, offenders must fight overwhelming odds when seeking to reenter society due to multiple reasons.
Presently, most offenders receive harsh punishments that place them in long-term confinement. Due to overcrowded prisons, many inmates are left idle without the ability to contribute to society. Furthermore, crowded prisons mean that inmates are often housed with offenders of varying degrees: for instance drunk drivers may be housed with rapists and murders. These crowded prison systems thus become a breeding ground for gang violence and continual criminal behavior (The National Review).
Due to these unhealthy prison conditions created by mass incarceration, many are now calling for quicker and less harsh punishments to be enacted. Conservative political news source, the National Review, suggests, “if we make punishments immediate and predictable, yet modest” this will instill a sense of quick threat in the wrongdoer’s eyes; this will make it less likely for the wrongdoer to commit further crime.
For example, Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE) is an intensive-probation program that deals with serious drug offenders. This program forces patients to face random drug testing with threat of immediate imprisonment if probation is violated. Reports from HOPE claim that, “even habitual drug users usually go clean on their own when faced with the immediate threat of two nights in jail” (The National Review). Of course, one example of success cannot and should not be taken as a sure answer to a huge problem, yet shouldn’t steps be made towards seeing if methods such as those carried out by HOPE may indeed be more successful for helping criminals learn from their mistakes?
In relation, getting rid of the mandatory minimums currently in the judicial system could lesson incarceration rates. Presently, in a court of law, the judge is often pigeonholed into sentencing drug offenders to a mandatory minimum. This “minimum” only takes into account the amount of drugs on hand as well as whether or not this is the offender’s first arrest; it does not account for variables such as age, background, level of participation (i.e. leader, member, lookout, etc…). Therefore, the judge is unable to make a neutral case-by-case decision, which could take into account numerous variables involved (Friends Committee on National Legislature).
Currently, in Federal and State law, the prosecutor decides what crime or crimes the accused will be charged with. This means that in cases of minimum sentencing, the power lies with the prosecutor deciding the crime to be charged; a party that is definitively not impartial. However, if mandatory minimums were eliminated, impartial judges would have a greater ability to individualize punishment.
Overall, the U.S. incarceration system is drenched in racial inequality and unjust sentencing laws while simultaneously failing to help welcome past criminals back into society.
Mass incarceration must end. Prison systems must stop funneling inmates into packed cells. Sentences should be lessened for those whose crimes were smaller. Money saved should fund rehabilitation inpatient and outpatient programs. Lastly, educational opportunities and work should be better facilitated and established in order to promote moral growth and responsible citizenship.
With this understanding of our country’s systemic injustice, I now challenge you, the reader, to an ethical call for action. As a fellow American citizen and as a Christian, I challenge you to act on these skewed issues of the law. As reported in the news section of the STAR this week, Houghton students are lobbying in D.C. on this very issue of mass incarceration on March 11th-14th. To use an old cliché, you can be the change you wish to see in the world.
Contact Lauren Bechtel at lauren.bechtel16@houghton.edu if you wish to be a part of a social-justice movement in desperate need of a true Christian call for justice, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
