Criminal Justice System and Mass Incarceration in the U.S.A.

The Criminal Justice System and Mass Incarceration in the U.S.A.

Introduction: Just Mercy - Walter McMillan

• Walter McMillan was on death row for the murder of a young white woman in Monroeville, Alabama, in 1986.
• The trial lasted only a day and a half.
• Three witnesses testified against McMillan.
• The jury ignored multiple alibis who testified that he was at a church fish fry at the time of the crime.

Just Mercy - Walter McMillan

• Mr. McMillan had no prior criminal history.
• He was 45 years old and self-employed.
• He had an affair with a married white woman.
• A white man accused of crimes in another county was pressured by police and made false statements accusing Mr. McMillan of the murder.
• Sheriff Tom Tate arranged for Mr. McMillan to be placed on death row before his trial.
• Mr. McMillan spent 15 months on Alabama’s death row before his trial.

Just Mercy - Bryan Stevenson

• Bryan Stevenson is an American lawyer, social justice activist, and law professor at New York University School of Law.
• He is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative.

The U.S. Criminal Justice System

• Does mass incarceration make this country safer?
• Why does the United States have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world?

Incarceration and Crime Rates

• Is there a relationship between the increase in incarceration rates and the decline in crime rates in the United States?
• Incarceration has emerged as the most popular crime control strategy in the U.S.A.
• Researchers have argued that there is limited evidence that incarceration is an effective strategy to control crime.

Incarceration in the United States

• The United States has more people in prison than any other country in the world.
• The United States has an incarceration rate seven times higher than that of other developed countries such as Japan, South Korea, and Denmark.
• The “War on Drugs” in the United States accounts for much of this disparity.
• Incarceration rates have dramatically increased in the U.S. because laws have changed, making a wider variety of crimes punishable by incarceration and lengthening sentences for those incarcerated.

Mass Incarceration: The New Jim Crow

• The penal system not only conceals inequality, but it also confers stigma on ex-prisoners and reduces their readiness for the job market.
• Negative credential: 75 percent of people released from prison are unable to find work in the first year after their release.
• Ex-convicts often live at the margins of the labor market, precariously employed in low-wage jobs.
• The high incarceration rate reflects the societal attitude that criminals should be removed from society and punished.

The Rise of Mass Incarceration in the U.S.

• Mass incarceration is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States.
• In the mid-twentieth century, Americans tended to view incarceration as an ineffective means of controlling crime; prison was seen as a last resort.
• The Federal Bureau of Prisons planned to close large prisons in Kansas, Washington, and Georgia.
• In 1970, Congress voted to eliminate nearly all federal mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders, as most Americans viewed drug addiction as a problem of public health, not criminal justice (Alexander 2010).

Facts About Incarceration in the U.S.A.

• By 2008, 1 in 32 U.S. adult residents were under correctional supervision.
• By 2018, 1 in 40 U.S. adult residents were under correctional supervision.
• At the end of 2018, 6,410,000 people were under correctional supervision in the United States, and 2,123,100 were incarcerated (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2020).

Mass Incarceration in a Global Context

• The United States has more people in prison than any other country in the world and today incarcerates people at a higher rate than at any other time in history.
• In 2012, 716 of every 100,000 residents were incarcerated, a much higher rate than in Western European countries.
• The incarceration rate in Western Europe ranges from 24 per 100,000 residents in Liechtenstein to 122 per 100,000 in Luxembourg (Walmsley 2013).
• In 2012, The United States had 2,228,424 people behind bars, China had 1,701,344, followed by Russia, Brazil, and India.
• The “War on Drugs” in the United States accounts for much of this disparity.
• The United States has an incarceration rate seven times higher than that of other developed countries such as Japan, South Korea, and Denmark.

The “War on Drugs”

• The “War on Drugs” in the United States accounts for much of this disparity.
• Drug offenders represent “the most substantial source of growth in incarceration in recent decades, rising from 40,000 persons in prison and jail in 1980 to 450,000 today (King et al. 2005, 6).
• Black men are sent to prison on drug charges at thirteen times the rate of white men, yet five times as many whites as blacks use illegal drugs (Alexander 2010).
• Between 1970 and 1997, the population of women in prison rose from 5,600 to 75,000.

The “War on Drugs” - Statistics

• In 2005, 80 percent of drug arrests were for drug possession, and only 20 percent were for drug sales (Alexander 2010).
• Between 1993 and 2011, thirty million people were arrested for drug crimes. About 85 percent of these arrests were for drug possession, and only 15 percent were for drug sales.

Incarceration and Crime Rates

• Between 1998-2003, some states greatly increased the number of people they sent to prison, while other states did not. For example, California built twenty-three major new prisons between 1984 and 2004.
• Higher rates of incarceration did not translate into a more substantial decline in states’ crime rate.
• Crime rates have been steady or declining since the 1970s.
• Incarceration rates have gone up even as crime rates have decreased (R; King, Mauer, and Young 2005).

Race and Mass Incarceration

• In 2008, less than one-third of the population of the United States was black or Latino. In the same year, Blacks and Latinos made up 58 percent of the nation’s prison population (Sabol, West, and Cooper 2009).
• In 2009, the imprisonment rate of white males was 487 per every 100,000, compared to 1,193 per 100,000 Latino males, and 3,110 per 100,000 Black males.
• Much of the disparity is due to imprisonment for drug crimes, even though people of all races use and sell drugs at similar rates (Alexander 2010).
• By the end of the twentieth century, black men were seven times more likely than white men to go to prison.

Incarceration and Gender

• There were very few women behind bars prior to 1970, meaning that incarceration is a relatively new phenomenon for women.
• Between 1970 and 1997, the population of women in prison rose from 5,600 to 75,000.
• 2.7 million children are growing up in U.S. households in which one or more parents are incarcerated (U.S Census Bureau; Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2016).

Mass Incarceration and Gender

• Incarceration is a major social problem in contemporary United States.
• Legal scholar Michelle Alexander (2010) made the case that mass incarceration is the civil rights issue of the twenty-first century.
• She states that because it is legal to discriminate against felons, our criminal justice system denies rights and opportunities to African Americans, effectively replacing openly racist policies of the past.

Looking at Incarceration from a Qualitative Approach

• Incarceration has become a fact of life for many American families.
• An example of qualitative research on incarceration is the study done by Beth Easterling, Mary Baldwin College, and Elizabeth I. Johnson, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
• They have conducted Phenomenological qualitative research on Parental Incarceration.
• Through face-to-face interviews with incarcerated mothers and children with incarcerated parents, they explored:
  • The impact of mass incarceration on families.
  • The social and emotional difficulties that children encounter during parental incarceration.
  • The conflicting feelings that children often have about parents when they are released and back in the children's lives.

Beyond Incarceration: Collateral Consequences

Qualitative research on incarceration maintains that:

• Incarceration not only influences the lives of those behind bars, but it also has an impact on the lives of their children, spouses, and communities.
• Children with incarcerated parents have been found to suffer mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and aggressiveness.
• Mass incarceration affects the 2 million people behind bars and the 7 million people under criminal justice supervision.
• It also affects the 12 million felons in the U.S. and their families and children.

The Inefficacy of Mass Incarceration

• Higher rates of incarceration did not translate into a more substantial decline in states’ crime rates (R. King, Mauer, and Young 2005).
• Incarceration has had a limited impact on crime rates for two reasons:
  • It is just one of many factors that influence crime rates: changes in the economy, fluctuations in the drug market, and community-level responses often have more pronounced effects.
  • There are diminishing returns from incarceration; incarcerating nonviolent offenders has a minimal effect on crime rates (King et al. 2005).

By the Numbers

• 34 million - Number of Americans living in poverty.
• $17,420 - Highest income a single mother of one child can make to fall under federal poverty guidelines.
• 80 percent – Estimate of the number of people in the court system who qualify for a public defender.

By the Numbers - Continued

• 13 million – Number of misdemeanor cases in the U.S. per year.
• $50 billion – Approximate number of outstanding fines and fees owed to various courts in the U.S.
• $15,900 – Amount of money one impoverished Missouri defendant owed the court after a year's stay in jail due to shoplifting an 8.00 tube of mascara.
• 400 percent – Amount court fines and fees have increased in North Carolina since the Great Recession.

Book: Profit and Punishment – The Poverty Penalty

• Since late 2017, people in small towns like Salem in Missouri have been put in jail because they couldn’t afford various fines and fees.
• While violent crimes like rapes and murders tend to dominate public attention, about 80 percent of the cases in the court system, more than 13 million a year, are actually misdemeanors.
• Small crimes:
  • Shoplifting
  • Drug possession
  • Speeding
  • Driving under the influence
  • Simple assault
• Most of these cases involve the payment of court fines and fees.
• These fines and fees often start at the time of the arrest and continue sometimes after the person has served time in jail.

The Poverty Penalty

• Fines and fees:
  • Money earmarked by lawmakers as a backdoor tax
  • Salaries of clerks, public defenders, or the retirement funds of sheriffs and judges
• Pay-to-stay bill:
  • Charges people for time served
  • Rapid City, South Dakota: charges for jail time are small, $6.00 a day
  • Riverside County, California: $142.00 a day
• Nearly 80% of defendants live below the federal poverty line.

Philando Castile

• A 32-year-old African American man fatally shot during a traffic stop by police in St. Paul, Minneapolis in 2016.
• From age nineteen to the time of his death at thirty-two, Castile had been pulled over by police 46 times.
• He accumulated $6,000 in fines and fees.

Poverty Penalty - Messenger in Chapter 1: The Arrest

• Focuses on the story of three single mothers living in poverty—Berger, Killman, and Darby—who were abused by a legal system more focused on debt collection than public safety.

The Arrest: Killman

• Norman, Oklahoma, April 2009: Killman was visiting her grandmother in the hospital in Springdale, Arkansas. She was driving a blue 1996 Chevy Lumina that she purchased for $400.00.
• A police officer pulled her over due to a crack in the windshield.
• After searching the vehicle, the police officer found a pipe for smoking weed.
• Killman was handcuffed and placed in the back seat of the police car. (Kendy Killman had no criminal record).

Killman - Court Hearing

• Norman, Oklahoma, June 2009: Killman returned on June 9 to the Cleveland County Courthouse for her second hearing.
• She was charged with two misdemeanors: possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of marijuana.
• In Oklahoma, pipe residue is enough evidence to establish possession.
• Her attorney advised her to plead “No Contest.”
• The judge sentenced her to a year in jail on each count, but the sentence was deferred.
• Deferred means that the defendant won’t go to jail as long as they don’t violate the terms of their probation.
• Killman's sentencing was set for August 21.

Killman - Court Costs

• The judge ordered her to perform forty hours of community service and pay court costs.
• Court costs haunted her.
• Her court costs included:
  • Court assessment = $100
  • Victims’ compensation fund = $40
  • Month in probation costs = $40
  • Mental health fee = $100
  • Trauma care assistance = $100
  • Oklahoma court information system = $25
  • District attorney council = $15
  • Courthouse security = $10
  • Law library fee = $5
  • Sheriff’s service fee = $27.50
  • Some other fines and fees
• Total = $1,150.00 (Note: The costs were charged on each count, meaning she had to pay each one of them twice.)

Taxation by Citation

• There are more than 120 separate fines or fees called for in municipal, county, or state law in Oklahoma, depending on the circumstance.
• The people who pay these fines or fees are poor people who crowd the state’s misdemeanor dockets.

Cycle of Poverty

• Cycle of poverty:
  • Part financial and part psychological
  • Part personal and part societal
  • Part past and part present. (Messenger (2021), p. 7).

”Law Day”

• The cases that clog American courts include:
  • Traffic tickets
  • Driving under the influence
  • Noise violations
  • Shoplifting
  • Petty theft
  • Bar fights
  • Minor indiscretions

Global View - Prisons in Norway, Germany, and the Netherlands

• These countries incarcerate people at about one-tenth the rate of the United States.
• They focus on social reintegration, not punishment.
• Incarceration is a last resort.
• Punishments include community service, fines, and diversion programs.
• They have short sentences – twelve months or less.
• There are no collateral consequences after being released from prison.

Questions for Discussion

• What do you attribute to the fact that the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world?
• How can the criminal justice system in the USA shift from a punishment perspective to one of rehabilitation?
• How should we interpret the overrepresentation of Blacks in crime statistics?
• Some European countries have shifted their perspectives on the prison system by investing in rehabilitation. Do you think it is easier to do when the population is predominantly white?