Incarceration is not the answer
After watching frontline on the prison state they show how bad mass incarceration really is. This documentary took place in Kentucky where they are really struggling with how much money is being spent on inmates, how many inmates are coming in, and the area surrounding the jail. Kentucky spent 50 million on the prison system and most whom are there have never commit a violent offense. Beecher Terrace is a housing project on the west end of Kentucky where 1 in 6 people cycle in and out of prison each year. Kentucky spends 15 million each year just incarcerating people from Beecher Terrace and the other surrounding neighborhoods. Kentucky had a growth rate of 45% of prison population and the rest of the country had 13% with spending jumping up 220% to half a billion dollars. The United States has 4-5% of world’s population yet has incarcerated 24-25% of the world’s prisoners. The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world
Diving deeper into Kentucky and the prison system there the documentary followed multiple different people telling their life and story. First was Keef Huff from Louisville, Kentucky who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder while in prison. There is able to get his medication needed and has no problems so he gets released. Although, he is released with just the clothes on his back and nothing else. Then with many requirements and other essential needs that Huff needs to get together and with no help he will most likely end up back in prison and that is exactly what has been going on for over 40 years, costing the state over 1 million dollars.
Christel is 15 years old living with her mother and 4 siblings in a two bedroom apartment in Beecher Terrace. She states she knows a lot of people and even some related to her that are currently serving time in prison and most people do. She was diagnosed with ADHD and bi-polar disorder and was not attending school. Three days before her court date she overdosed and her court date was delayed when it came time again she took a plea deal and was on probation. Two days later she broke her parole and as a result spent 65 days in a juvenile detention center. She is now out for two months and so far doing well.
Charles McDuffie was a Vietnam veteran who suffered from PTSD and a drug problem. Since Vietnam he has received no mental health treatment. To keep Charles in prison it cost over 200,000 just for him. Once he was released he was taken to a treatment facility for drug use and then for his PTSD. Once there and got the treatment he needed has stayed clean and not gone back to prison.
All of these individuals were ones that did not need to be incarcerated. This showed the problems with mass incarceration we have in today’s criminal justice system. The documentary suggest other forms of penalties and ways to lessen the amount in jails and prisons. In 2011 a law was passed overhauling incarceration and thousands of nonviolent offenders will be let out early and some of the money saved will be spent for treatments for addicts and such. This reduced the amount but not nearly enough, especially with juveniles as nothing is set in place for them. When the incarceration rates slow will we be able to sustain that is the question? The answer is that with continuous work in the right direction it is possible and that is what the documentary showed.
In the documentary every person was from Beecher Terrace and the statistics of an individual who lives in or near there is more likely to be incarcerated than those in other areas. Beecher Terrace is a housing project and those who live there cannot afford much else. This goes hand-in-hand with what we read in “Policing the Black Man” in chapter two. This is that no matter the race, poor and indigent people are more likely to be incarcerated than anyone else. “A study by Laurent Krivo and Ruth Peterson looking at extremely disadvantaged neighborhoods concluded that ratees of violence were considerably higher in these area regardless of race. The author concluded that it is these differences in disadvantages that explain the overwhelming portion of the difference in crime, especially criminal violence, between White and African American communities” (Mauer, 2017). Incarceration is normalized and operated cradle to grave.
There is a relation of mass incarceration in the documentary and in our reading in class reading. To begin the reading the book talks about Clarence Aaron who had no prior criminal record introduced a classmate whose brother was a drug dealer to a cocaine seller he knew from high school. He was present at the time of the deal, received cash by the dealer and then police arrested the group and Aaron was charged with three terms of life imprisonment (Maurer, 2017). In the documentary multiple people mentions how often people are incarcerated and for every crime, no matter the severity. Keef Huff, “Where I come from everybody get locked up,” the warden, “We are locking people up that do not need to be,” and “Mentally ill come on a regular basis, not violent, and may have substance abuse, then when they are released soon enough come right back, we call them frequent flyers,” and Christal stating, “Even the smallest infractions are treated as criminal and sends a message of whether you follow the rules or not you are going to jail as it is part of destiny.” The message is clear that it does not matter what you do, more likely than not you will end up being incarcerated.
For me personally I did not realize how intense the issue of incarceration was. The content in the documentary showed how once an individual enters the system it is extremely hard to get out and most times is a revolving door. Prison sometimes are often the only place for these people to go, like for drug users who are in and out the most, but even then they might not have a bed to sleep on. Then while in prison they get clean and send them back into the world and they end up right where they started, so the issue at hand then is providing help outside of the prison walls. If more treatment centers were available would that be able to resolve some of the issue?
I would recommend this documentary to other people because often times when society thinks of people who are incarcerated they think of the violent offends and categorize them all like that. When in reality most people are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses. In addition, showing how much unnecessary money is going to prisons and jails and if more money was spend on building and having treatment centers available instead that would be able to decrease the amount of people in jail and the money spent on it every year, saving money and helping people. When offenders are not sent back to prison that saves the state more than fifteen thousand dollars. A great example from this documentary would be Charles McDuffie’s he needed help, a place to go and once he was released form prison and received the help and treatment he needed he was able to better his life and did not end up back in prison. Both parties ended up winning in the end and that is what it should be.
Resources:
Documentary:
Edge, Dan., Mucciolo, Lauren. (2014, April 29). Prison State. Frontline
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/prison-state/
Davis, A. (2017). Policing the Black Man. New York.