Randall Evans

ENG 123
Prof. Sung
Fall 2016
Literature Review
Literature Review
Mass Incarceration is a epidemic that grow throughout the 20th century, this problem is
often overlooked by most, but this does not that the severity of this issue. The severity of this
issue that has grown tremendously in the 19th century the 1980s specifically, but since then this
problem continues to grow at an exponential rate, a rate that is simply staggering. In October
2013 the incarceration rate of the United States was the highest in the world, 716 per 100,000 of
the national population. It is numbers like that are not only shocking but are proof that the
American public and academics should lean closer to the side of caution, while addressing this
topic. This issue is simply more than the examination of data and analysis, this issue consists
with a culmination of things such as constituting the punishment Americans receive for crimes
committed. As articled by Steiker (2011) From the flattening of the incarceration rate to the
repeal, of the most of draconian drug laws, to innovations with alternatives to incarceration and
attempts to reentry of those released from prison, signs abroad of what could be the beginning
to reverse the reliance on incarceration.

Steiker (2011) again reports, on the central questions that could be used to frame the
importance and urgency of this epidemic on American soil. 1). Why does this change occur?
Can we identify the causes of this massive shift in our criminal punishment practices? 2). What
has this change wrought? What are the consequences of mass incarceration for American
society? 3). How can we reverse course? Are there plausible exit strategies and alternatives? Dr.
Steiker asks very important questions that highlight the change that is now apparent while trying
to identify how detrimental a cause and shift of this magnitude; can affect the way American
criminal justice system operates. Patten (2016) offers an qualification concerning the questions
that is posed in Stekiers legal journal Mass Incarceration: Causes, Consequences, and Exit
Strategies. According to Patten their is a 300% percent increase in incarcerated individuals from
1980 to 200, and the United States has surpassed Russia as the world leader of incarceration.
According to the SentencingProject, there has been a 500 percent over the past three decades
alone. California alone has more individuals incarcerated than the entire country of France; even
a smaller state like Michigan has a higher number of increased individuals than France. The
tough-on-crime rhetoric has overemphasized crime as the major social problem.

Their is an race hat this issues seems to be disproportionately affecting and this is people
of the African American community. Crutchfield (2015) sheds light on the effect these
alarmingly high incarceration rates are having on people of color. Although the United States
has made some progress, it remains a substantially racially segregated national residentially.
And, the country stays very economically segregated as well. It is not surprising that poor people

of color have been incarcerated disproportionately during the massive increase imprisonment
that occurred in the nation since the early 1980s. Crutchfield offers these concessions in order to
better diagnose the race that continues to be affected and what that means overall for the
incarceration, with this new evidence it become more and more evident of to why, these
problems are reaching the surface. Crutchfield would be in agreement with Michelle Alexander
with the target group of people who have been affected the most, in her book The New Jim
Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. She speaks of these travesties that have
proven to be divisive in the African American community. These two academics agree that this
type of targeting of a community can be ultimately destructive , and can be disparaging to a
community. It is this observation that offers better insight into why the problem because as bad
as it has, but despite how different the arguments are that all of those experts seem to make one
does not offer a short or long term remedy of this situation.
Another academic by the name of Rena Steinzor discusses the possibility to the revision;
of our current criminal justice system which proposes the change to the way we decide
punishment for crimes, a change such as this could mean changing the way each offender is
punished. In her article titled Dangerous Bedfellows, Steinzor states The conservative
solution to the over-criminalization problem is to pass legislation that would insert a new
definition of knowledge into any provision of law that happens to omit an explicit standard for
the mens rea part of the prosectors burden of proof. The new definition would override decades
of judge-made laws that interpreted what constitutes guilty mind for each statute. In their place,
conservatives would substitute a far higher burden of proof for prosecutors. Under the Hatch bill,
government must prove that a defendant was practically certain his or her omissions would

have a specific result. This text proposes working legislation to the questions I aforementioned
the three questions that Carol Stieker mentioned in her legal journal, which included 1). Why
does this change occur? Can we identify the causes of this massive shift in our criminal
punishment practices? 2). What has this change wrought? What are the consequences of mass
incarceration for American society? 3). How can we reverse course? Are there plausible exit
strategies and alternatives?. I have learned many new things due to the extensive research that
has been done, these scholarly experts offered great insight into the origin and the progress of
this issues, by examining different perspectives, findings and interpretations of a universal issue
that is plaguing the United States. Although the issue is not any closer to being solved I feel
prepared to, to dive even deep into this issue and what can be done in order to solve, while also
examining the potential effectiveness in hopes that they are enacted and last long term.