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In todays political climate, many politicians and citizens alike are revisiting the
incarceration system. It is without a doubt, that the United States is king when it comes to
locking up its own citizens. According to the ACLUs, Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons
and Incarcerations the United States imprisons more people than any other state on the planet.
The rate at which the US is imprisoning its own citizens has reached percentages over 400, and
continues to climb. (Human Rights Watch 2014) With that in mind, one would question who is
the representative inmate, what is the representative crime, and why has incarceration grown
exponentially since 1979? The answer is in terms of racial and economic discrimination of
people of color, primarily black.With the help of the war on drugs," through the objectification
of people of color and the poor, Americans have given the unseen nod of approval to the
The War on Drugs has had a long and destructive evolution throughout American
history. With its inception during the prohibition era of the early 20th century, law makers felt
the necessity to make sentencing more potent, because of the upstart development of the alcohol
marketplace by criminal organizations. Those that were targeted and arrested during this time
period were mostly poor people and the marginalized. This trend of targeting the poor and
marginalized has continued all the way to today. Instead of the production and distribution of
alcohol, poor people and people of color are receiving lengthy sentences for various types of
offenses, especially nonviolent drug offenses. These acts of delinquency are in response to the
economic disadvantages that these communities have been suffering from since reconstruction.
What has happened during this time period is the active practice of objectification. American
society had deemed poor people and the marginalized as the other and has related crime to an
intrinsic trait. (Foucalt 267) Thus, the stereotypes by which these people are characterized by,
ultimately makes them the operative targets in this period of mass incarceration.
In John Tierneys, Time and Punishment: Prison and the Poverty Trap, the article goes
into detail about how Carl Harris, an African American man from DC, came to a life of drug
dealing and his familys experience while he was in prison. What is stunning about this story is
that it highlights how the sentencing for his crime was lengthy, and a representative example of
article, With regard to race . . . for every 100,000 black males in the population, 3,023 are in
prison. (HRW 2014) Along with that, referring back to the Tierney article, in the era of mass
incarceration, one in four African American children has had a parent in prison. These children
are then more prone to carry out the same acts of delinquency like their parents, generationally
impacting the communities. (Foucalt 268) With broken families and lack of economic
opportunities, many families like Harris become an everyday example of how mass
When looking into the economic discrimination side of mass incarceration, one can see
how lack of financial means can be a reason alone that could lead one behind bars. This is what
experts call debtor prisons, the act of locking up people for not paying fines and court fees they
cannot afford. In the 2015 Buzzfeed article, In Texas Its A Crime to Be Poor journalists
found numerous instances in which citizens of El Paso, Texas have been locked up for not
paying fines and court fees because they cant afford them. According to the article, it is illegal
for judges in the state of Texas to imprison defendants and not hold any poverty hearings. In a
city in which 20% of the population is under the poverty level, it details the lack of economic
opportunities which leave these people vulnerable to imprisonment for accruing multiple fees
over a time period. Many that are imprisoned can lose the little to dismal income they relied on,
It took time and opportunity out of my life . . . Im really, really hoping to God that I can find
something to support me. said Levi Lane, a victim to debtors prisons. (Campbell and Taggart)
The judges that sentence the impoverished see this as a non issue, questioning the nature of the
defendants. Many judges disregard poverty hearings or refuse to offer them to those facing time
for fines because the defendants simply dont ask.)Campbell and Taggart) This relates to how
the poor are seen as those that lack autonomy and objectified as less then others.
In summation, one can see how the historical narrative of the War on Drugs has created
a society in which the marginalized and poor have been objectified and targeted as the enemy in
this war. These two elements of ethnicity and socioeconomic disadvantage, increases the
perception of dangerousness and hence the risk of being subjected to remand custody and a
prison sentence after conviction (Snacken 399) Therefore, these two groups of people have and
will continue to be a part of an overgrowing prisoner population. With all of this in mind, one
can really question what we are doing, and how is it preventing people from producing and
distributing drugs.