What should we do about the rates of incarceration of minorities in the U.S. ?
Your text does a great job of discussing the last 25 years of incarceration rates in this country. Many people would argue that part of the reason(s) why our crime rates across the board are at historically low levels is that we have locked up a record number of people. Murder rates in our major cities are where they were in the 1970’s (except for a few cities like Chicago, Baltimore or Detroit). The fiscal cost of these incarceration policies have been billions in tax dollars spent building prisons and jails or paying the cost of incarcerating prisoners. The human costs are that millions of people are incarcerated and that disproportionately black and Hispanic males are much more likely to be incarcerated. According to our text if this trend continues 1 in 3 young black males will end up incarcerated. What do you think has caused this trend? Can the criminal justice system do anything to change these numbers? Should our elected officials be concerned?
