Aaron Cluff

Professor Olabjao Dada

English 111

October 2nd 2017

Why does America have a higher rate of incarceration than other countries?

For the last few decades, the rate and overall populous of incarcerated Americans has

slowly increased. The United states incarceration rate when compared to other countries of

similar stature is simply staggering. The comparable countries typically have 100 prisoners per

100,000, whereas the US has around 707 prisoners per 100,000 people. A famous statistic that is

often quoted by political pundits convinced they can bring about change is: America has five

percent of the world's population, but around 25 % of its inmates. There are a few causes of this

unprecedented amount of people in jail, and the ones that will be discussed can be directly

related to one another.

For the few decades leading up to the 1970s, the United States had a relatively normal

sized prison population.Then, as political leaders started to pass legislation, largely for political

reasons, the prison population shot up. Much of the legislation passed that would incarcerate

people had to do with drugs, and the most popular phrase attached to these pieces of legislation is

called America's War on Drugs. Richard Nixon first used the term in 1971, but it wasn't until

1982, when Ronald Reagan declared drug use a severe threat to national security. The drug laws

that Reagan and his government passed sent tens of millions of people to jail.To this day, over 50

% of the 2.3 million incarcerated Americans are serving sentences for drug crimes. While the
War on Drugs is now seen as a failure, its consequences led to millions of Americans being

locked up for nonviolent drug crimes, costing American taxpayers billions of dollars.Ronald

Reagan tapped into the present hysteria of Americans and was able to pass laws that did nothing

to fix the drug crisis instead, they made it worse.

In 1986, after reeling from the cocaine fueled death of Len Bias, a famous basketball

player, Democrats saw the potential to outflank the Republicans and win some political points

with an Anti drug campaign of their own. What was born from these meeting was the tragic

mandatory minimums law of 1986. Mandatory minimums are sentences that must be served

when the perpetrator has a certain amount of drugs on them. The grand idea of the whole thing

would be to get high level drug kingpins in jail and off the streets. The issue was the amounts

that can land someone in jail for ten years were far below what a drug kingpin usually has.

Instead of getting these rich drug kingpins, the government and law enforcement were mostly

only able to get low level street dealers, or users. The results of the mandatory minimums law

were often the same; people get caught with a low level amounts of drugs, get sent to jail for 5 to

ten years, get out with no education or job prospects, and get right back into trouble. This

particular bill caused a 300 percent increase in people in jails.

Only a few years later were lawmakers allowed to make it worse. The conspiracy

amendment did away with targeting drug kingpins and started going after anyone with any ties

to drugs whatsoever. An example being; someone who is simply at the front door of a known

crack house is liable to be charged for any and all crack cocaine the organization sells, whether

he sold it or not. After this bill was placed, prisons swelled in population 450 % There were

many issues with these bills of course. Both of them allowed other defendants to sell each other
out for lightened sentences. And this led to high level drug dealers ratting out low level members

for shortened time. These stories often were made up and not real, and there was no true way to

fact check them.

Close to all of the arrests made in this area were made in low income areas, where blacks

and hispanics live. These families often had no other ways of living other than illicitly selling

drugs. Since most of the prisoners were uneducated and had arrest records that did not allow

them to find gainful employment, they turned back to drugs. This increased the likelihood they

went back to jail, which was further exacerbated by the three strikes law. This asserted that after

three penalties against the law, they were to be locked up for life. This led to non violent

prisoners being locked away for a lifetime, without ever getting out.

All of these decisions and more left us where are today. While some improvements might

have been made, the inmate population stays triple other countries. We finally are able to

recognize the mistakes we made in the past, and can go about reforming these issues.

Scommegna, Tyjen Tsai and Paola. U.S Has the Worlds Highest Incarceration Rate.

U.S. Has World's Highest Incarceration Rate,

www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2012/us-incarceration.aspx.

Miles, Kathleen. Just How Much The War On Drugs Impacts Our Overcrowded Prisons,

In One Chart. The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 10 Mar. 2014,

www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/10/war-on-drugs-prisons-infographic_n_4914884.html.
 The Reagan-Era Drug War Legacy,

stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/341/reagan.shtml.

Drug Laws. PBS, Public Broadcasting Service,

www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/snitch/primer/.