Mass Incarceration

Question 1

Incarceration and Inequality

Answer 1

America’s prisons and jails have produced a new social group, a group of social outcasts who share the same experience of incarceration, crime, poverty, racial discrimination and low education

Mass incarceration produce sizeable and enduring social inequality for three main reasons:
it is invisible
it is cumulative
it is intergenerational

Question 2

Concentrated Inequality

Answer 2

Most of the growth in incarceration rates is concentrated at the very bottom of society, among young men with very low levels of education

Disparities of race, class, gender, and age have produced especially extraordinary rates of incarceration among young African American men with little schooling

Question 3

Invisible Inequality

Answer 3

The inequality created by incarceration is often invisible to society because incarceration is concentrated and segregative

Racial and class disparities in incarceration have produced a generation of social outliers whose collective experience is entirely different from the rest of American society

Question 4

Cumulative Inequality

Answer 4

Serving time in prison or jail diminishes social and economic opportunities of those already socio-economically most disadvantaged
Time in prison means time out of labor force, depletion of work experience
Criminal stigma
Reduced earning and unemployment
Least chances of upward mobility in society

Question 5

Intergenerational inequality

Answer 5

The family life of the disadvantaged has become dramatically more complex and unstable over the last few decades

Divorce and non-marital births have contributed significantly to rising rates of single parenthood

These changes in American family structure are concentrated among low-income mothers

High rates of parental incarceration add to the instability of family life among poor children

Among African American children, 1.2 million, or about 11 percent, had a parent incarcerated by 2008

Question 6

Consequences of Mass Incarceration on US Society

Answer 6

The redrawing of American social inequality by mass incarceration amounts to a “contraction of citizenship”  fewer people enjoying full membership in society

Self-sustaining inequality: Socioeconomic disadvantage, crime, and incarceration in the current generation undermine the stability of family life and material support for children
These children have greater risk of diminished life chances and criminal involvement and incarceration

The current incarceration system is expensive and exacerbates the social problems it is supposed to control

Social policy improving opportunity and employment, for young men in particular, a better instrument for public safety than prison