Topic issue

United States prison population

Research Problem

Prison populations continue to rapidly grow within United States, which is becoming a major problem for the state. As of the year 2016, it was estimated that there were over 2.2 million adults in American prisons (Kann, 2019). This means that for every 100,000 people that live in the U.S, 655 of them were in jail. Maintaining these facilities, feeding and providing for the prisoners and also ensuring that proper security is provided is becoming very costly given that most on these prisons are operating at above full capacity.

Stance

            Although crime levels are what are motivating this growth, much of it is connected to sentencing rules and guidelines, the sentences lengths and the general public bias of crimes. This study will take a scholar practitioner stance in that it will concentrate on the minority races within the U.S prisons. The study will seek to understand the factors that drove them to commit crimes, their background and the severity of their sentences as compared to other races in the U.S prisons.

Philosophical world view

The issue of over population in U.S prions fits in the transformative world view. This view argues that causes determine conclusions, thus the issues that are studied by the transformativists replicate on the need to recognize and evaluate the causes that sway the consequences (DeWitt, 2018). A transformative view is reductionistic in that the intent is to reduce the concepts into a small, understated set to assess such as variables that comprise hypotheses and research questions. In this study, face to face interviews with the prisoners and written questionnaires will be undertaken at many prisons across the country. This will attempt to help understand the current situation in U.S prisons, the manner in which racial minorities are distributed and whether there are differences in their sentencing as compared to the other races.

Theory

The issue of prison population best fits in the social science inductive theory. This is because; incarceration is an issue that affects society and it is best understood by understanding human beings and their relationships with the society. An inductive approach is best suited in this study because it will begin with observations through the interviews with the prisoners after which theories will be proposed based on the observations. The patterns, regularities and resemblances in the data acquired from the interviews will help to understand the concept of over population in the U.S prisons and how racism affects it all.

Background

Prison population began to grow during the 1970s during the administration of President Nixon when politicians used fear and racism to push for punitive policies in the U.S. The U.S population is not uniform, there are many minority groups. Prison population exploded in the 1980s during the administration of President Reagan which rose from 329,000 to 627,000 eight years later (Gramlich, 2019, Bazelon, 2019). This rise mostly affected the people of colour and this has been the trend over the years.  Though there have been many increases in equality of treatment across races, it is clear that there is still a long way to go. The historical election of the President Barack Obama into office as the first black president in U.S history played a great role in improving the rights and equal treatment of minority races (Pfaff, 2019). There are however many social economic examples of racial differences in factors such as employment and the rate of incarceration.

The rate of incarceration has risen differently over the years dependent on the race. The African American incarceration rates have been 184% and that o the Hispanics has been 235%, this is in contrast to the non-Hispanic whites that have been 164% (Grattet & Bird, 2018). Throughout the U.S, there is an average of three African Americans for every four serving time in prison. This is an incredibly high rate and it is not proportionate to the rates for the non-Hispanic whites. The question hence remains, what is driving the high rates of imprisonment for minority races.

Research Approach and design

This study will use a qualitative approach combined guided by a narrative design and open ended interviewing for data collection because it is more suitable. The study will use open ended questionnaires to acquire information from the prisoners on matters race and incarceration and therefore an inductive approach will effectively help the researcher to come up with the correct theory to explain prison population.

Hypotheses and variables

There are three hypotheses for this study;

Logical Hypothesis 1: as the total number of racial minorities rise, the incarceration rate will increase.

The minority population is the independent variable for this hypothesis.

Logical Hypothesis 2: as the country’s citizens become more liberal in ideology, the incarceration rate will decrease. The independent variable in this prediction is the rate of liberal ideology in U.S citizens, while the dependent variable is the rate of incarceration.

Logical Hypothesis 3: An increase in the amount of people living in poverty will cause incarceration rate to increase.

The independent variables in this prediction are unemployment rates and the percentage of the people living in poverty within the U.S. the dependent variable is the rate of incarceration.

Purpose of the study

The purpose of this study is to develop a better understanding of the issue of prison over population and its effects. The study also helps to bring to light the impact of incarceration for minority races and the role that poverty plays in prison population. The study also helps to bring an understanding on alternative sentencing policies that could be used to help deal with prison population in the U.S.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Pfaff, J. (2019). THE MYTHS OF MASS INCARCERATION: What reformers get wrong

about crime and punishment. America, 220(4), 18–25. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=134632295&site=ehost-live

Grattet, R., & Bird, M. (2018). Next Steps in Jail and Prison Downsizing. Criminology &

 Public Policy, 17(3), 717–726. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12383

Bazelon, E. (2019). THE FUTURE OF... Unlocking Prison Problems. American Scholar,

88(4), 12–13. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tfh&AN=138245567&site=ehost-live

DeWitt, R. (2018). Worldviews: An introduction to the history and philosophy of science.

Kann, D. (2019, April 21). The US still incarcerates more people than any other country.

Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/28/us/mass-incarceration-five-key-facts/index.html.

Gramlich, J. (2019, April 30). The gap between the number of blacks and whites in prison is

shrinking. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/30/shrinking-gap-between-number-of-blacks-and-whites-in-prison/.