The 13th Amendment states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The key word is except. Since the Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan days, our prison population has skyrocketed due to the “War on Drugs” and “Law and Order” era’s. The United States prison population is currently at about 2,220,000 people and per 100,000 of that number is 2,207 for African Americans, 966 for Hispanics, and only 380 for whites are incarcerated according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). You’re probably wondering, why do we have so many minorities in prison? It’s because of the new form of slavery and racism that is called mass incarceration. Racism is still alive and so is slavery. You may not see it with your own eyes, but it is disguised. It is hidden in our very own systems such as the prison industry and our criminal justice system. In this country, if you have been convicted of a crime, no matter what crime was committed, you can be used as a form of slavery.
August 8th, 1968. Richard Nixon accepts his presidential nomination for the Republican Party. Four years later, as race relations are still very tense, Richard Nixon officially declares the “War on Drugs”. By doing so, he dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug control agencies, he increased the size of police departments and gave them more authority than what they should have and pushed through measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants. Before he resigned from office because of the famous “Watergate” scandal, he faced much backlash from many American’s because of his policies during the Vietnam war, specifically from the “hippie movement”. Hundred’s of thousands protested the streets of Washington D.C. and all across the United States and this is where his law and order and war on drugs redirect comes into much use. What he did was link marijuana to the hippies and heroin to the African American community, or as he would call them, enemies. He ordered police departments to use heavy force in black communities and thousands were getting arrested and sentenced dramatically high sentences in prisons, some for just marijuana which was ordered to be raised as high Schedule 1 drug by Nixon. By 1972, the prison population skyrocketed and rose to nearly 200,000 according to the (BJS). Long story short, the War on Drugs was a complete failure and was used to criminalize and to incarcerate African American’s and other minorities. It was a political act by Richard Nixon to fight against his biggest critics, a way to silence them. That was exactly the administration’s plan and even top advisor for Nixon, John Ehrlichman, said in a 1994 interview to one of Harper’s writers, Dan Baum, “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities…. We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
After Nixon resigned, the prison population was still rising due to his policies still being into play. Another president who added to mass incarceration was Ronald Reagan. Reagan was basically another Nixon. In October of 1982, just a year after Reagan was sworn in as president, he officially declared a “War on Drugs” once again in the United States. By 1982, the prison population was above 450,000 people. During the 1980’s, was the time when mass incarceration was beginning to be a huge topic and whether people of different races were being treated equally. During this time, private prisons and correctional facilities were starting to be built all across the nation. In 1983, CCA was founded (Corrections Corporation of America) by Ronald Reagan’s very good friend, Thomas W. Beasley. Private prisons and correctional facilities run off of money. How do they get the money? Their profit is based on how many people they imprison in their facilities. Ironic how these facilities were created a year after another “War on Drugs” was declared. Anyway, these facilities loved when they would get an inmate because that would mean a higher profit for them. When I stated that slavery is still alive, it still is going by the 13th Amendment. During this time and going into the 1990’s and 2000’s, the Federal Prison Industries, also known as Unicor was at it’s all time high. Unicor is a wholly owned United States government corporation created in 1934 as a prison labor program for inmates within the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and a component of the Department of Justice. They average over 900,000 million dollars in revenue every single year, all going towards the government. Unicor prisons are filled with prison inmates who do forced labor, slavery, for very little amount of pay. McDonald’s, Walmart, AT&T, Chevron, and IBM are just the names of a few companies that support the use of prison labor and that work together with Unicor. The work for these companies could range from picking potatoes in prison farms to making clothes in prison factories. The minimum wage for Unicor workers in certain states is only $0.23 cents. Lower than Haiti’s, one of the most the poorest country in the world. The minimum wage for Unicor workers in Texas and Georgia? $0. The U.S. wants you to go to these prisons. That’s why over 45 million dollars are spent in lobbying for these prisons and a 37% increase in locations from 2002-2009. This is capitalism at it’s finest. By the end of Reagan’s term, 1989, the prison population now rose at about 700,000.
Today in 2017, we have a prison population of about 2,200,300. More than any other country in the world. 1 in 5 of those people are locked up for minor drug offences and non-violent crimes. While colored people make up only 30% of the U.S., about 60% of colored inmates make up the prison population. According to the BJS, 1 in 3 black men will be arrested, 1 in 6 for Hispanics and 1 in 17 for whites. Remember, only 30% of the U.S. is colored. Race is also likely to determine who gets the death penalty. The odds are 4 times higher for a black male than a white male. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, black individuals convicted of a crime and even a non-violent crime receive sentences that are 2o times longer on average than white offenders jailed for the exact same crime. Also stating that African Americans are six times more to be put into solitary confinement which is a horrible inhumane prison practice done by prison officers where they put an inmate in a windowless cell for sometimes 23 to 24 hours a day, every day until they are taken out. These facts prove that the criminal justice system is just simply unfair and is not a form of justice but a form of racism.
So how do we end the mass incarceration of minorities? Simple answer, we need justice reform. Simply just offer a justice system that works for all people of all color. We don’t need a war on drugs or law and order, we need reform. Our current president uses the term law and order quite frequently and it should fear some American’s because this country has heard that term time and time again and it has been proven to be unfair. Another way to stop mass incarceration is to put an end to the private prison industry. Poor minority communities like Chicago and Detroit also need resources, they don’t need law and order or more police officers on the streets, because police officers won’t stop the violence in the streets. It’s even proven that most crimes in Chicago go unsolved. In 2015, over 70% of the crimes went unsolved in Chicago. They need resources such as schools, medical facilities and jobs, not boarded up schools and homes and especially not more prison facilities. I hope our current leader and future leaders will speak out more against mass incarceration and put an end to this new form of Jim Crow.
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