Research Questions:

#1. How do prison systems profit from inmates?

• Two types of systems: Public and private
• Public Prisons

• State operated
• Mainly (check) run by tax dollars
• Often overcrowded

• Private Prisons

• Run by company, corporation or business
• Bought by private firms from the government (Two major firms run the business)

• Government provides inmates, prison operates like a business
• Government gives $ to prison for firm’s operating/maintenance costs (usually in $ per inmate)  

• Incentivize imprisonment through monetization (an argument)
• Usually hold low-risk inmates
• Modern private prisons have been around since the 1980s

#2. How/when did prison start?

•  Modern prison system: Eastern State Penitentiary in 1829
• The decline in the prison population is not connected to the crime rate, which has fallen steadily over the past decades.

• Prison population is a result of policy changes and court orders

#3. First life sentence? - Why?

• “[...] inmates facing lengthy prison sentences have lower rates of disciplinary misconduct than inmates serving short sentences (see Flanagan, 1980). In explaining this finding, Flanagan (1980) posited that long-term inmates take a different perspective on doing time. Recognizing that they will be in prison for an extended period, they act to enhance the meager privileges and activities allowed them.”
• While the United States accounts for about 4 percent of the world’s population, it has more than a third of the estimated number of people serving life sentences

#4. How many people are in prison in the US? How does race play into this?

• In 2017 2,185,008 people were in prison, jail or incarcerated in the U.S.?
• Black to white ratio was 5.1 in 2014

• Black men serving prison sentences at almost six times the rate of white men
• Racial disparity in women has narrowed (black women are incarcerated at double the rate of white women, but the incarceration race playing field has leveled out since the turn of the century.

• The U.S. not only locks more people up, but we do it for longer.
• In 2016, the United States Census Bureau (2017) 10 reported 61.3% of the total population was white, 17.8% Hispanic or Latino and 13.3% African American. In contrast, Nellis (2016) reported that 38% of these prisoners are African American, 35% white and 21% are Hispanic!
• To generalize the data, young, African American people (and probably older as well) are much more likely to be incarcerated than whites.
• Racial profiling

• Stop & Frisk laws

• From 2004-2012,  80% of the 4.4 million (NYPD) were done on blacks or Latinos

• African Americans were found to be 30% more likely to be arrested than whites for the same exact crime.
• Three Strike Laws

• What does this look like over time?
• After slavery was abolished, racist states found a loophole in the 13th amendment. They could imprison blacks and they became slaves of the state.

#5. What would reform look like? Who would miss out and who would grow?

• Performance-based payments to private prisons
• A drop in the federal prison population is due (largely) to a 2014 decision by the U.S. Sentencing Commission to reduce sentencing for drug crimes. (Accounts for a third of the year-over-year decline.)
• Some of the states with notable drops, including New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, pushed through significant policy changes, such as reclassifying felonies as misdemeanors and giving more discretion to sentencing judges.

#6. Difference between jail, federal prison, state prison, institutes and penitentiaries?

• Jail is mostly used as a holding place for those who are awaiting a trial or sentencing, or those who have shorter sentences.
• Prison is mostly used for those who have sentences longer than a year.
• Federal prisons are under jurisdiction by the federal government
• State prisons are run by state correctional authorities

#7. What’s up with solitary confinement?

• Statistics show that inmates who have spent time in solitary confinement are more likely to reoffend than those who serve their sentence in a prison’s general population.

• C = A+B? These people are more violent. They are put in solitary and reoffend because of the same violent nature, not necessarily because they were put in solitary confinement at all.

• “Inmates who end up in solitary confinement for breaking a rule in prison may also be predisposed to commit more crimes.”

• Especially if they are released directly from solitary

• Primary aim of solitary is to manage inmates behavior whilst in prison, not rehabilitation.
• Individual cells and solitary confinement started in the mid to late 1800s

• First case was in 1829 as a rehabilitation experiment by Quaker.Put in place for spiritual reasons. Short story, it did not work. The idea was abandoned.

• First “Supermax” prisons (High security, isolated prisoners, long term. For “the worst of the worst” criminals.) formed in the mid to late 1900s

• Started as temporary lockdown for one prison, lead to permanent lockdown

• 1983, two prisoners (serving life) killed two guards within 24 hours. Prison felt they had to do something to protect the guards and other inmates. Bureau Director got involved, and the prison was put on permanent “lock-down”, where each prisoner was confined to their own cell.

• About 80,000 prisoners are being held in solitary
•  40 states operating Supermax or control-unit prisons, which collectively hold more than 25,000 U.S. prisoners

        At year-end 2017, the imprisonment rate for sentenced black males (2,336 per 100,000 black male U.S. residents) was almost six times that of sentenced white males (397 per 100,000 white male U.S. residents).

Dictionary:

• Recidivism - the tendency for a criminal to re-offend.

• 68% of people reoffend within 3 years of being released!

From the Mass Incarceration Throughline Podcast:

• The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world
• In 1829, we started a new era of incarceration: individual cells and solitary confinement, time for people to “reflect on what they had done”. (By 1870’s it had changed around the board)

• This modern penitentiary model helped develop a culture that used imprisonment to deal with criminality

• End of reconstruction era (Late 1870’s): forced “free” black men back into slavery, this time under the states’ ownership. Laws targeted them, sent to prison/jail, became workers again. Happened predominantly in the south.

• The law allowed mass criminalization

• 1880’s-ish - social views changed from blacks being stupid to being violent or criminal - evidence used against them was how many were in prison and reinforced with bunk science
• 1990’s “tough on crime” culture - permeates within today’s politics.

• More prosecutors, means more cases, means more imprisonment

• Most Americans experience crime second hand (through media, etc) because of its concentration in certain areas

• This creates a feeling that they need to be harder on crime even if they are not experiencing it firsthand, which leads to the problem stated above

• Fear of crime affects policy changes, make prosecutors want to be harsher and tougher on crime