Statistics on Prisons
By the mid-1990s, 75% of families visiting convicts in California prisons were living below the poverty line.
|
“Private Prison Population, 2000 and 2016.” Sentencing Project, 2 Aug. 2018, www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-prisons-united-states/.
Private vs. Federal Prisons: What's the difference?
In the United States there are two main types of prisons, federal and private, the preeminent difference being that the latter profits off of incarceration. While some American politicians and businesses claim that private prisons are both effective in corrections and beneficial to local economies, recent research suggests that they do more harm than good to our communities, and that they rarely succeed in solving issues of deviance. This is important because private prisons, first contracted by state governments in the early 1980s, hold nearly 10% of the United States prison population or just over 130,000 inmates. This population has increased by 47% since the year 2000, a rate five times faster than the total prison population.
|
D'Otreppe, Stephanie. “Key Players That Helped Draft Arizona's Immigration Law.” NPR, NPR News Investigations, 28 Oct. 2010, www.npr.org/2010/10/28/130833741/prison-economics-help-drive-ariz-immigration-law.
|
The unprecedented growth in the United States prison population from just 25,000 inmates at the start of the 1980s to over 1.5 million in 2016 and the introduction of private prisons to the United States around the same time was not a coincidence. In fact, one can even argue that private prisons hold the majority of the responsibility in the prison boom. Private prisons are a business, and like any other business, they need product in order to achieve financial success. In this case, the product is American citizens and the success comes from their incarceration into a private correctional facility. The top prison companies are making billions and attorney-turned-activist John Dacey hopes to take them to the Supreme Court for violating the constitution. By 2010, the annual revenues for the top two private prison corporations alone totaled nearly $3 billion. “We have opened Pandora's Box by injecting a profit motive.”, says Dacey, attorney and Executive Director of Abolish Private Prisons (APP). APP is Dacey’s non-profit that aims to challenge the constitutionality of prison privatization by filing a lawsuit and taking the issue to the Supreme Court. Dacey hopes that the Supreme Court will see the profits made off of private prisons as a financial incentive to incarceration, and abolish them on the grounds of unconstitutionality. |
Edmonds' Theories |
Incarceration tears convicts from their families and children, significantly impacting the lives of the people around them. In The Unintended Victims of Mass Incarceration: The Effect of Parental Incarceration on Children, writer Cynthia Rose Edmonds uses three main theories to categorize the negative effect that parental incarceration has on a household.
Labeling Theory
|
Social Bond Theory |
First, Edmonds describes Labeling Theory, where juveniles engage in deviance in response to the labels they are given by society. For example, children with one or more parents incarcerated often are defined by this factor in their community, due to the stigmatization of incarceration. As a result, these children may feel as if they owe a debt to society, holding blame for their parent’s deviance which often leads to their turning to violence and delinquency.
|
Next, Edmonds presents Social Bond Theory, which she describes as “the process by which absence of attachments to families and social institutions promote juvenile delinquency.”. In other words, children with one or more parent in prison often lack structure, commitment, authority, and attachment in their lives- all of which are key for childhood and adolescent development. With the absence of these social structures, a child whose parent(s) have been incarcerated is significantly more likely to engage in deviance.
|
Strain Theory
Finally, Edmonds illustrates Strain Theory, or “the process by which failure to achieve monetary success can lead one to commit crime.” The theory describes how parental incarceration splits a family’s income providers, financially destabilizing the family and their children. As a result, children raised in homes with one or more parents incarcerated are more likely to turn to crime for income than one with neither parent incarcerated. For example, a 1995 study conducted in the state of California found that 75% of families who visited an imprisoned parent were earning an income that placed them below the federal poverty level. It should be noted that while this study was done over two decades ago, the United States prison population has increased by 790% since the decade prior to the data found. With this growth, the issue of deviance stemming from parental incarceration has not diminished, but has rather experienced a snowball effect, impacting more and more American families and landing more hopeful young kids in prison.
Sabatini, Beppe. “Caging Children Is a Crime Not A Business Model | Trading Family Separation for Family Prisons Is NOT A Solution | E Pluribus Unum.” Flickr, 30 June 2018, www.flickr.com/photos/8703833@N08/29386337028.
Taken at the Families Belong Together March and Rally in San Francisco on June 30th, 2018, this image shows that the impact of incarceration on families and children is no less than it was two decades ago. These people are marching against President Trump's proposed solution to the border crisis by putting children in captivity with their incarcerated parents.