by Rachel Cramsey, PEP Board Member<\/p>\n
Prison reform has become a popular topic of conversation among prominent political actors as of late.\u00a0 We have seen many Left and Right voices come together to call for a revamp of the United States\u2019 current prison system.\u00a0 There\u2019s a good reason for this outcry: two million people are currently incarcerated for nonviolent offenses alone[1]<\/sup><\/a>.\u00a0 We have locked away a large portion of our own population.\u00a0 Part of this increase is evident in communities of color and how they have been targeted by police practices. \u00a0A recent study showed a 231 percent increase in the number of black men imprisoned between the early 80s and 2011, as opposed to an increase of 198 percent for white male sentences in the same time period[2]<\/sup><\/a>.\u00a0 Another way of considering our prison population is to understand that one child in 28 is presently experiencing the trauma of having an incarcerated parent[3]<\/sup><\/a>.\u00a0 A 2010 study found that 43 percent of women in prison were of communities of color, and of these women, many were found to be the sole caregiver of a child or children under the age of 18[4]<\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n This is who we have incarcerated.\u00a0 Not long ago political leaders spoke highly of the need to be tough on crime, and now with a prison industry teeming with prisoners, attention is being called to undo that. \u00a0\u00a0We are seeing a shift-some of it verbally -in what political parties have to say about the prison industry and what the next steps are in reducing crime.\u00a0 And everyone seems to have an opinion.\u00a0\u00a0 Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Hilary Clinton, Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. Chris Christie and Gov. Scott Walker have all called for some sort of prison reform-all of them will also soon be on the campaign trail.\u00a0 In a recent speech made at Columbia University, Hillary Clinton called for two things: first for oversight of federal funds to police departments to ensure funds are going to the implementation of best policing practices rather than the purchase of war weapons for local departments, and secondly she called for an alteration in how we approach punishment in our current prison system[5]<\/sup><\/a>.\u00a0 Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Mike Lee (R-UT) have been working on legislation that will lessen mandatory minimums and allow judges to have more voice in the sentencing process for the cases they hear[6]<\/sup><\/a> and Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) are propositioning that inmates who go through rehabilitation should be credited an earlier release date[7]<\/sup><\/a>.\u00a0 Similarly, Texas is trying to defer those with drug offenses into rehabilitation rather than prison while New York is offering education programs as deterrents[8]<\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n As plans for prison reform are enacted, it will be telling how real the steps taken are going to be.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have enough rehabilitation programs in this country outside or inside prisons to give access to those who would benefit, and a large portion of those returning from prison will face issues of unemployment and an inability to pay fines accrued along the way.\u00a0 Those constraints will have to be faced.\u00a0 Cruz, Walker and others have spoken to the need for prison reform, but have worked hard against marginalized communities in myriad ways, so it\u2019s hard to say how far they will go in reforming a very broken system, especially as that broken system becomes more privatized and corporate interests step into the fray.\u00a0 Prison reform isn\u2019t about addressing just the issues of mandatory minimums. This topic goes beyond decreasing how many men and women are housed in our cells. Prison reform also means social reform, and it will be a topic that will have to be discussed far beyond the election season.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/sup><\/a> Brekhus, K. (2015). Hillary Clinton Comes Out Swinging for Reform, Wants to end \u201cEra of Mass Incarceration.\u201d [Speech]. Retrieved from http:\/\/ http:\/\/www.politicususa.com\/2015\/04\/29\/hillary-clinton-swinging-reform-era-mass-incarceration.html<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n [2]<\/sup><\/a> Bump, P. (2015). Hillary Clinton hopes to undo the mass incarceration system Bill Clinton helped build. [Article] Retrieved from http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/the-fix\/wp\/2015\/04\/29\/hillary-clinton-hopes-to-undo-the-mass-incarceration-system-bill-clinton-helped-build.html<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n [3]<\/sup><\/a> Brekhus, K. (2015). Hillary Clinton comes out swinging for reform, wants to end \u201cEra of Mass Incarceration.\u201d [Speech]. Retrieved from http:\/\/ http:\/\/www.politicususa.com\/2015\/04\/29\/hillary-clinton-swinging-reform-era-mass-incarceration.html<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n [4]<\/sup><\/a> Pollock, Joycelyn.\u00a0 \u201cFemale Prisoners.\u201d\u00a0 Women\u2019s Crimes, Criminology, and Corrections<\/em>.\u00a0 Long Grove, IL:\u00a0 Waveland Press, 2014:\u00a0 189-218.\u00a0 Print.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [5]<\/sup><\/a> Brekhus, K. (2015). Hillary Clinton Comes Out Swinging for Reform, Wants to end \u201cEra of Mass Incarceration.\u201d [Speech]. Retrieved from http:\/\/ http:\/\/www.politicususa.com\/2015\/04\/29\/hillary-clinton-swinging-reform-era-mass-incarceration.html<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n [6]<\/sup><\/a> Neyfakh, L. (2015). Ok, so who gets to go free? [Article]. Retrieved from\u00a0 http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/crime\/2015\/03\/prison_reform_releasing_only_nonviolent_offenders_won_t_get_you_very_far.html<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n [7]<\/sup><\/a> Neyfakh, L. (2015). Ok, so who gets to go free? [Article]. Retrieved from http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/crime\/2015\/03\/prison_reform_releasing_only_nonviolent_offenders_won_t_get_you_very_far<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n [8]<\/sup><\/a> Zuckerman, M. (20-14). \u201cGet a little less tough on crime. [Article]. Retrieved from http:\/\/www.usnews.com\/opinion\/articles\/2014\/05\/09\/its-time-for-prison-reform-and-an-end-to-mandatory-minimum-sentences<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Rachel Cramsey, PEP Board Member Prison reform has become a popular topic of conversation among prominent political actors as of late.\u00a0 We have seen many Left and Right voices come together to call for a revamp of the United States\u2019 current prison system.\u00a0 There\u2019s a good reason for this outcry: two million people are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3833"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4696,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3833\/revisions\/4696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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