The following piece is an opinion and does not reflect the views of The Eagle and its staff. All opinions are edited for grammar, style and argument structure and fact-checked, but the opinions are the writer’s own.
Currently, there are nearly two million incarcerated individuals in America. Such a statistic may lead people to think about violent offenders, masses of prisoners and other stereotypes surrounding incarcerated populations. However, such stereotypes are deeply flawed, as generalizations of such a large and diverse group of people are crucially insufficient in their failure to consider racial, social and economic inequalities. As an institution that emphasizes social justice and sends many graduates to work in the justice system, we must re-evaluate these harmful misconceptions. To combat the system of mass incarceration, we need to change our perspective on prisoners — shifting the blame from the individual to the system.
When the complexities of prison populations are grossly oversimplified, it is easy to write the currently incarcerated off as “bad people” or “dangerous.” However, despite cultural perceptions, prisoners are not inherently unethical people, and the majority of them are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses. A look into the intersectional experiences of prisoners and how their identities interact with social, cultural and political structures within America can reveal the great nuance of mass incarceration.
To begin, in examining the intersection of race and incarceration, Black Americans are incarcerated at much greater rates than their white counterparts. Black Americans only make up 13 percent of the population but are 37 percent of the prison population. This is not because Black Americans commit more crimes or crimes that are more devastating in nature, but rather due to targeting and structural inequality.
Black individuals are policed at notably higher rates than white Americans. Moreover, a 2023 study found that police in major U.S. cities made 24 percent more arrests per hour in neighborhoods where the share of Black residents are more than twice that of the general population. Black individuals also tend to face harsher sentencing than white individuals for comparable or identical crimes.
People of color are targeted for incarceration every step of the way. When we choose to look past the surface and uncover the overflowing criminalization-based state that is this nation, we find that incarceration rates are significantly based on race — a completely uncontrollable and socially constructed trait.
Race and the justice system are just some examples of the ways in which America fails its incarcerated populations, even when they are not behind bars. The nation also comes up drastically short in its public defense system. Research has found that public defenders are grossly overworked, yet they are the only attainable option for many incarcerated people. For Black people facing criminal charges, over three-fourths are represented by public defenders — a much higher rate than that of any other racial group. In this way, the justice system is not providing justice; it is perpetuating the deep-rooted racial hierarchies of the nation.
The overflowing caseloads of public defenders lead to subpar results for those they represent. On average, a defendant with a private attorney can expect sentences that are three years shorter than a defendant with a public defender.
The fees associated with private representation are unattainable for many Americans facing charges. In D.C., the average per-hour cost of a criminal attorney is nearly $500. Again, this manifests as discrepancies in sentencing, even for highly comparable crimes. As students rise to work in governance and the criminal justice system, we need to separate prisoners from shallow explanations that lack the nuance to account for systemic inequalities.
No imprisoned person has the same story or the same path to incarceration. American society, including our cultural norms and education systems, needs to stop thinking of the American justice system as a binary — good or bad, innocent or guilty — because, the truth is, the justice system is not a fair disciplinarian.
All of these factors culminate in a broken justice system and a disturbing carceral state where the individual is largely powerless. Uncontrollable facets of one’s identity can have an immense impact on their chances of becoming incarcerated. People of all races, classes and gender identities commit crimes. However, the policing, defense and sentencing of said crimes is anything but similar. As a society, it is time to associate prisoners with their humanity, not their wrongdoing. When we view prisoners as people, not just offenders or numbers, we can work to dismantle the systems that treat them as sub-human.
Addie DiPaolo is a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs and a columnist for The Eagle.
This article was edited by Alana Parker, Rebeca Samano Arellano and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks, Nicole Kariuki, Ella Rousseau and Charlie Mennuti. Fact checking done by Luna Jinks and Sasha Dafkova.
