Prison Alec Dupont Speech 16

We Americans like to think of ourselves as the land of the free.  But we really aren’t. Economically speaking the heritage foundation doesn’t even rank America in the top ten. It might hurt a little that we incarcerate more people than any other country in the world. America houses more than two million people in its prison population, a number which has more than quadrupled since the seventies. The only number expanding fasters than our prison population was the number candidates for the GOP primary. This is not a problem we can continue to ignore. We by no means have the highest crime rates, nor do we have the most dangerous country to live in. So why do we have this bulging tumor on our side? The most glaring reason is the drug war. The start of the drug war marked the start of America’s rapidly inflating prisons, yet the problem flows much deeper than that. It has rooted into our country like a weed that will not be easily ripped out. When someone goes to jail, they serve a sentence far longer than the one prescribed by the judge. High recidivism rates mean that those who go to jail once are extremely likely to return. Like hungry customers they always return. It would make for a great business model. And it does. We have allowed Capitalism to take over the prisons, and handed the lives of inmates to private prisons. While the free market deserves some praise, this is one case where it is wildly inappropriate.  It is not only harming the inmates but harming America’s culture as well, for we cannot be a nation that stands together while we have so many shunned in cells. It will by no means be easy to fix such an ingrown problem, but if we ever want to call ourselves the land of the free, we must find a way to fix our broken prisons.

            Now, as we all know, the war on drugs has completely solved America’s drug issues. In the nineteen seventies Richard Nixon started this program with honorable intentions. He wanted to clean up America’s streets, make it safer THE CHILDREN. But it by no means made the streets safer. And it had the nefarious side effect of drastically increasing our prison population over the next thirty years. The series of laws targeted both distributors and users, and added mandatory minimum sentences for low level non-violent drug crimes. Now half the people serving time in federal prison are serving time for drug offenses. Most people plead guilty to avoid a trial, leaving our justice system in a sorry state. The system is not entirely fair either, as discrimination runs rampant in the incarceration system. While African Americans and whites both use drugs at approximately the same rate, African Americans are sent to prison at up to ten times the rate of whites. I wonder why. Many of these hundreds of thousands are sent to prison for offenses harming no one but themselves. Our laws are like chipotles, they look fine, and in fact they seem quite nice. But on the inside, they have a deep sickness, churning up in the bowels of American law. We choose to hide out problem members of society. We don’t treat them for the illness of drug addiction. We put them in a place out of sight and out of mind, because they are a reminder that America is far from perfect. Our lack of interest and belief in a miraculous solution to our drug problem has given us this ballooning prison population. The over-incarceration of drug offenses, combined with the lack of progress made by the Drug War, has come to epitomize everything that is broken about American prisons. Just by ingesting or buying the wrong combination of chemicals can you destroy your life, becoming another number in America’s overcrowded prisons.

            Of course most aren’t in prison forever. Eventually ninety five percent of those who live are serving time on federal prison will be released back into the public. But that is by no means the end of their sentence. It is a tremendous struggle to reintegrate into society; nearly every job application has one important question on it, “Have you ever been convicted of a felony.” Most of the time this question disqualifies you of even taking the interview. Ex-prisoners are given few resources to help them get a job, to once again become productive. This struggle leads to the recidivism rates that are astonishingly high in our justice system. Within five years of release, seventy five percent of ex-convicts will reoffend. Like Sisyphus, they are forever doomed to struggle to push the boulder uphill, quiet often to have it come tumbling back down in crushing defeat. Ex-felons are even denied the most basic political right: the right to vote. Our incarceration system assumes that, because they broke the law once, they now have a complete disdain for it and no longer have the right to have any say. People say “they broke the law, they deserve their punishment.” But these people have already served their time. They have done everything the law has told them to do, but now they are punished extra. We see them differently, because it is SO EASY for us to dismiss them as “convicts”, “felons”, “rule breakers”, but they are people, human beings that had lives and loved ones outside of prison, and now their defining characteristic is that they ONCE broke the law. Prisoner Reentry into society is such a key feature of a properly functioning justice system, and ours is about as easy to navigate for ex-felons as it is for a color blind person to solve a Rubics Cube. We have let our prison become not a place for rehabilitation and correction, but a place where we stick the people we find to be undesirable. It is a temporary solution to a very ingrained problem. And as long as the problem persists, Recidivism will continue to pad the cells with repeat offenders.

            Prisoners would make excellent customers. They LITERALLY have to stay. And where there is money to be made, the market will find a way. And so private prison corporations were formed. The government pays the private prisons to house convicts, and with the bulging prison population, they make quite a bit of money. The Corrections Corporation of America makes of ONE POINT SEVEN billion dollars in total revenue. While the capitalism has brought quite a bit of success to America, this is Capitalism at its worse. It is a leech feeding off of the lowest part of our society. It has attached itself to our incarceration system, and it will not let go. With the Citizen United decision in 2010 corporations are free to make it rain in politics, and Correction Corporation of America is the very best of all of them. They spend seventeen million in lobbying and donate 1.9 million to political campaigns. They SAY they are a corrections corporation, rehabilitating prisoners for life in society. But they are a for profit prison. All that money they spend lobbying, is spent on lobbying for laws like those that expand mandatory minimums. They don’t want a healthy justice system, because they profit off it being broken. They don’t want rehabilitated felon, because private prisons want their valuable customers to keep coming back. If we don’t fight this, the problem will never change, because the politics follow the money, and the corporations have all of the money. Our system has become so broken we are now handing our problem to private corporations to take care of, with devastating effects to our judicial system.

            No one wants to spend their life in a cage, but prisons are a necessary part of any society. We need a place to place the people that are dangerous to the people in society, and we need a place to rehabilitate those delinquents who need to change to be productive members of society. But our Prison has gone far beyond that. We have arbitrary mandatory minimums that keep low level, nonviolent offenders in jail for crimes that harm no one. We place people in our prisons without a plan, just like you put a child in time out. And worst of all, we have let corporations lobby to make money off of keeping people in incarcerated. We look down upon other countries with dictatorships and corruption. But none can claim to jail as many people as we do. We cannot continue to call ourselves the land of the free while we have the largest prison population in the world.

Work cited

Flatow, Nicole. "The United States Has The Largest Prison Population In The World — And It’s Growing." Thinkprogress.org. Think Progress, 17 Sept. 2014. Web. 23 June 2015.

This article written by Nicole Flatow, argues about the problems of the American incarceration system, as well as offering solutions and pointing out efforts that are being made in the political system to fix the problem of the bloated prison system. This article provides a mostly fact based outlook on the problem, giving numbers and facts about the prison system, however, it betrays a slight bias towards the prison system being too large for it to be a good thing. I can use this source in my overall research to provide me facts and figures that help for a logical argument to support my position.

Hartnett, Stephen J. “Challenging the Prison-industrial Complex: Activism, Arts, and Educational Alternatives.” Urbana: U of Illinois, 2011. Print.

This book detailed the problems of the United States industrial prison complex in a more abstract way, questioning the moral and societal problems that come with having such a massive prison population. It does this in a different way than most books, as a collection of argumentative articles each focus on different aspects of the issue. It approaches the issue from a wide variety of angles. This book, though it has a variety of points of views, it overall has a bias against the prison system, lacking a variety of counterclaims. This book is good for my research as it provides a variety of views and a large amount of information in one place.

Keefe, Mike. "U.S. Prison Population." Intoon.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 June 2014.

This cartoon, drawn by Mike Keefe, depicts a prison that is bloated and appears to be almost bursting, while claiming “we’re number 1”. It places the prison system in a negative light, as something that we should not be proud of. Though it may have a bias against the prison industry, it provides a satirical view of the problem that man of my other sources lack, and this is an important viewpoint to have when looking at an issue.

Pelaez, Vicky. "The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery?" Globalresearch.ca. New York and Global Research, 31 Mar. 2014. Web. 23 June 2015.

This article focuses on the problems that lead to the bloated and overgrown prison population in the United States, it begins by stating the problem, and then goes into the reasons why there are so many people in our prison system in the first place. The article provides an overarching view of the problem and its causes. This article has a bias against privatized prison corporations, which causes it to have a more negative view of the prison industry in general, this is not a problem with the piece, as it does not change the effectiveness of the argument. This article is useful in my research as it provides a basis for the reasons for the problem of our prison population.

Prison State. Dir. Dan Edge and Lauren Mucciolo. Frontline, 2014.Locked Up In America. PBS, 29 Apr. 2014. Web. 24 June 2015.

This film details one year in the life of four people in a housing project in Louisville, Kentucky. All of these people have run ins with the incarceration system of Kentucky, and all of them go to prison. The film provides personal accounts of their time in prison, and how our current system affects minorities and the poor. This film is a credible source and appears to have little bias. It is useful because it provides a personal outlook on the problem of our bloated prison system. It will be useful for the use of a pathos appeal in an argument.  It is a well made documentary.

"Recidivism." Http://www.nij.gov/. National Institute of Justice, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2015.

Lee, Suevon. "By The Numbers: The U.S.'s Growing For-Profit Detention Industry." Http://www.propublica.org/. ProPublica, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2015.

"Highest to Lowest-Prison Population Ever." Http://www.prisonstudies.org/. Institute for Criminal Policy Research, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2015.

"2015 Index of Economic Freedom." Http://www.heritage.org/. Heritage Foundation, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pz3syET3DY&index=5&list=PLmKbqjSZR8TYFj7eqb0DhDs8hdNm8IcZ2