Mass Incarceration Analysis

Especially the children of the person being deported. Migrants that are greatly affected by this are mainly from Mexico and central America. Once a family member is deported the family faces the question of what they will do. Will they move their whole family, even their U. S born children from the culture and society they have grown up in the country of their origin? Or will the family split up creating a single parent home or leave their child with another caregiver? Or lastly will they live in risk as an undocumented migrant? Undocumented migrant workers are much more likely to face economic struggles, lack of social usage of programs, and social remoteness. Although these directly affect the adult migrant the children suffer from these effects as well. They do get a proper education or amount of healthy foods, which untimely lead to many obstacles and setbacks for the child. There have been studies to prove that children of undocumented parents are more likely to be developmentally delayed. There is a long chain of effects on the children of undocumented parents. In the article it states “Yoshikawa (2011) found that when a parent is undocumented, he/she experiences greater social exclusion, which results in greater economic hardship and job-related stress, lower social support, parental psychological distress, and decreased use of center-based care, which in turn affects children's cognitive development at 24 months of age. Children of undocumented parents are also less likely to have health insurance (Lurie, 2008) and be rated in good health by their parents” (Kalil & Ziol-Guest, 2009). Also, when a child is separated from a parent or parents, they deal with the feeling of trauma, abonnement, isolation, depression, and fear. Not only do the children deal with these emotions, but their entire family also faces many economic problems since once one of the parents leave,

Mass incarceration is one of very many huge problems we have here in America. But when you really look into the core of the situation, whose fault is it really. Right away you think it is the criminals fault for getting arrested in the first place right? More people should be well behaved and not end up in prison? But what a lot of people fail to notice are the ones that actual do the actual sentencing. In Paul Butlers book, Lets Get Free he writes, “I became a prosecutor because I hate bullies. I stopped being a prosecutor because I hate bullies.”

There are many vulnerable populations within the United States. One of the many vulnerable populations are undocumented immigrants. Undocumented immigrants also known as illegal immigrants according to Wikipedia (2016) is defined as “the migration of people across national boarders in a way that violates the immigration laws of the destination country” (para 1). The United States of America has one of the largest population of immigrants. In this paper, I will be discussing the multiple stressors related to undocumented immigrants as well as the programs that can be used to help alleviate those stressors.

Mass Incarceration is a huge problem in United States culture. No other country in the world incarcerates its population the way that America does. “The U.S. incarcerates more people than any country in the world – both per capita and in terms of total people behind bars. The U.S. has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, yet it has almost 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population.” Worse yet the majority of the incarcerated individuals belong to a minority group despite not participating in illegal activity any more frequently than their white counterparts. Is the United States criminal justice system racist and if so what is the cause behind this racism. After the end of slavery, many southern black Americans traveled to the north to escape endless violence and discrimination. In the south they could only find low paying field jobs whereas in the northern cities there were steady factory jobs promised as well as the hope that discrimination could be escaped. The northerners while against slavery were not egalitarian and were not in favor of hoards of black Americans surging into their cities and taking jobs away from the white working poor. The need for social control by white Americans only grew with the population of black Americans living in the cities and working in the factories. The rhetoric of “law and order” first came about in the late 1950s as white opposition to the Civil Rights Movement was encouraged by southern governors and law enforcement.

Undocumented immigrants are foreign nationals who entered the United States without authorization or entered legally but remained in the United States without authorization. However, undocumented youth and students usually have no role in the decision to come to this country. They are usually brought to this country by their parents or relatives, generally due to economic hardship and they have spent more years in the United States than in their country of birth. (Baum, Flores, 2011) Over the years, undocumented immigration has grown tremendously in the United States. “Among the nearly 12 million undocumented immigrants, a

A common misconception is that legalizing illegal immigrants would just result in “criminals” running around the streets causing disturbances. Who is ignored is the benefit of a very specific population of Americans, the sons and daughters of illegal immigrants. American children are harmed every time one or both of their parents is deported as a result of the lack of an immigration reform. In the article, “Children of Illegal Immigrants Struggle When Parents Are Deported” Valbrun states that “the government deported more than 46,000 parents of children with U.S. citizenship in the first half of 2011, according to the ARC report.” In these conditions, jailed parents cannot fight for their children’s custody and at times lose it to the government who then puts the children out for adoption or in foster care when they already have loving parents. Properly legalizing immigrants would improve the lives of many American children and improve the American social aspects with more

There is no question that mass incarceration is a worldwide epidemic that needs to be discussed and addressed. America has five percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s prison population (Just Leadership USA, 2017) Various policies dated back centuries helped to create this problem of mass incarceration (Just Leadership USA, 2017). Today there are 2.3 million Americans incarcerated throughout the state, local, and federal jails (Just Leadership USA, 2017). New York City (NYC) houses approximately 10,000 inmates per year; 43.7% of these inmates are diagnosed with having a mental health disability (New York City Department of Corrections, 2017). 54% of the inmates on Rikers Island are arrested for a minor offense and should be able to fight their cases from home; however, in many instances the family members are of low socio-economic status and unable to post bail (New York City Department of Corrections, 2017). Minor offenses include loitering, jumping the turnstiles, unnecessary Parole / Probation violations, and trespassing. In many instances, it is the mentally ill and homeless individuals who are arrested for trespassing as they elect to sleep in the subways instead of taking residency in a shelter. Moreover, many of these offenses does not have to result in an arrest. Police officers have the autonym to let some of these individuals go with a warning, desk ticket, and/or summons.

The collateral consequences of mass incarceration are effects in an inmate’s community, social life, employment, wages, and family life. The separation of an inmate from their family causes many struggles to occur in the household such as the inability to become financially stable for their partners, a loss of connection with their partner and children, living with a social stigma, and divorce or separation. Even after an inmate gets out of prison, their life is still impacted from being incarcerated. Because of the stigma that comes with being incarcerated, “ex-offenders” find it hard to either find a job, maintain a job, or get a job with a decent amount of pay. These consequences contribute to inequality through establishing a type of status on an individual. By becoming an inmate or even before they are imprisoned, inmates’ deal with Lower-class family issues and stigmas that stick with them for life.

Immorality, A subject that has become so common that we tend to just ignore it, or perhaps we don't even care anymore. Our own americans don't care about the safety and integrity we once had; within the current year there has been 3,228 murders by gun, 410 deaths due to domestic violence, and 9,495 deaths due to drunken driving. Currently as if May on average the death rate of murders by a firearm is ten per day, one die a day due to domestic violence, and drunken driving racks up twenty-six deaths per day. However, the thing to be feared of is that thirty-six americans die per day on average due to three easily avoidable actions. . Within barely four months of 2018 crimes and deaths have skyrocketed and with the current legal punishment system its slowed down some but its

In the New York Times editorial, “End Mass Incarceration Now”, The Editorial Board argues that there needs to be an immediate stop in the amount of people being incarcerated because there is injustice and it is costing too much money for the United States. The Editorial Board begun by saying that mass incarceration is causing societal and economic damage. They say that the sole reason why there is mass incarceration is because of injustice. The Editorial Board backed up this mass incarceration by bringing up an interesting statistics report by the National Academy of Sciences that stated how there has been a vast increase of the prison population in the United States since the late 1900s. The Editorial Board then mentioned how a big chunk of these prisoners were sentenced to prison for committing nonviolent crimes. They explain that the reasons for this is because of harsh sentencing due to politicians not wanting to be soft on crimes and the United States using incarceration as a way to solve its problems, based on a report by the Human Rights Watch. This all brings up the point that there is injustice in the United

The article Notes “From the Field The Criminalization of Undocumented Migrants: Legalities and Realities” by Tanya Golash-Boza talks about how undocumented migrants are treated like criminal even though they are told that the detention center is not a prison, it is still a form of prison that separate people from their many. They also told that deportation is not a punishment but it is a form of punishment because it separate families from their love once, and sometimes put them back in a situation they were running from in the first place. Undocumented migrants feel as though this is a cruel punishment because most of them did not choose to be undocumented. They just happen to be especially those who parents brought them to the United State

America is experiencing a social phenomenon commonly referred to as mass incarceration, in which the rate of incarceration has increased by, “...has grown by 700 percent.(Goffman)” in the last 40 years. Mass incarceration is difficult to digest in totality due to its immense nature, nuance and variety of answers with the essence of ‘could be right’. In order to decipher the complex puzzle of mass incarceration, we must establish borders to manifest clarifying order in the overwhelming clutter of data. Theory will assist in demonstrating how the general and specific facts of issues, in this case mass incarceration, relate by essentially declaring the philosophical frame of the interpretation. In order to gain a nuanced understanding of America’s mass incarceration, three relatively distinct theories will be applied: conflict theory, structural functionalism and symbolic interactionism. These theories are categorized by two approaches of sociological investigation- macrosociological, which emphasizes the analysis of social systems and populations on a large scale, and micro sociological, which emphasizes the impact individuals have on social structure.

In my findings and analysis I will have the opportunity to answer the research question, I interview a Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officer and a relative who experienced staying at different detention centers in Texas for six months before she was deported to El Salvador. Before I started with the interviews I let them know about my research question and then I followed up with interrogations and thoughts, details and opinions. The first interview I conducted was with the ICE officer; Mr. Fields believes that to build a wall at the border will not solve any immigration problems. He believes only criminals should be detain and deported. He said when they arrest people that do not have a criminal record they let them go, if they arrest them in the United States, when they arrest people at the borders they investigate them and most of them are looking for asylum. He said every case is different; the judge approves some cases when they go to their court hearing. Other detainees get a bail and if they cannot pay the bail they get deported. He strongly believes there are good people and bad people and he shared that he grew up in East LA. I questioned him about his thoughts or opinions regarding the law SB 1070 in Arizona and he said those laws do not apply here, it would be hard to comment on them and he would keep it personal. He believes undocumented immigrants or aliens like he called them are not deviant, he believed they are normal people.

Research suggests that legal immigrants commit less crime than native-born citizens, but despite this evidence there are discrepancies in how the criminal justice system punishes both groups, leaving legal immigrants to be punished more severely than native-born citizens. Many believe that legal immigrants, particularly minority groups, are not only a threat to society, but they are said to increase crime in the United States (Wang, 2012). Research by D. Sohoni and T. Sohoni (2013) revealed that, “nativist discourses also present certain immigrants as a threat to American society. This threat is both cultural, because of their (presumed) unwillingness or inability to assimilate, and social, because of their (presumed) displacement of American workers, and their abuse of social services and community resources” (p. 50). Due to this negative perception of immigrants, they are viewed as “aliens,” “immoral,” and “outsiders” who do not belong in the US (D. Sohoni & T. Sohoni, 2013). Immigrants have been fighting not only a war with society’s negative views of them, but also the power those perceptions play on their ability to gain upward mobility and succeed in the US and their ability to receive fair punishment when they commit offenses. Therefore, many are left unable to adjust to societal norms and are not given fair treatment by different community resources or the criminal justice system.

The mold for an undocumented family typically consists of at least one if not both parents being undocumented and children who are natural born citizens. Families with mixed legal status have many hardships to face and overcome one of the most prominent and most fear inducing of all: deportation. The risk of one of their loved ones being deported and the chance of never seeing them again in the country is one that haunts millions of not only undocumented immigrants but their children as well. In a recent study conducted on multigenerational punishment Laura Enriquez stated the following, “In particular, scholars have shown how deportation policies impinge on the economic, social, and emotional well-being of family and community members in the United States and the country of origin” (Enriquez 941). Stating that immigration laws and illegal immigration status along with the risk of deportation tear families apart is an understatement; “…deportation threatens immigrant family stability. For fiscal years 2013 and 2014 (“ICE”) removed nearly 368,000 and 441,000 persons, respectively; making the total removed over the course of Obama’s presidency approximately two million” (Enriquez 940). A current web article by Derrick Rubenstein found most opponents argue that “…mass deportation would pay for itself in about four years. Plus, of course,