Crime Inequality in the US

• Mass Incarceration is a crime inequality
• Mass incarceration is the significant and sustained increase in the number of individuals incarcerated in the USA
• In 2022, around 2 million people were behind bars. For every 100,000 people 505 were behind bars
• Why is there mass incarceration: Poverty and lack of resource, ‘The war on Drugs’, harsher penalties for drug offences, ‘tough on crime’ policies and racial disparities
• Sentencing disparities is a crime inequality
• Sentencing disparities is the unequal or inconsistent application of punishment within the criminal justice system
• Sentencing disparities have racism and unconscious bias
• Black and Hispanic Defendants are more likely to go to jail then get probations than white defendants
• Black Americans sentences are 4.7% longer than white Americans
• Hispanic people sentences are 1.9% longer than white men
• Violence at the hands of the police is a crime inequality
• George Floyd is a black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds
• Terence Crutcher’s car had broken down, police came and instructed Crutcher to put his hands on the car. The police shot him 6 times thinking he was reaching for a weapon in his car. The police officer was found not guilty
• Eric Garner was killed in an illegal chokehold performed by the police when he was found selling cigarettes, he shouted how he couldn’t breath but wasn’t listened to and later died
• The ‘First Step Act’ was signed into law in December 2018 by Donald Trump. It’s to improve the fairness of the federal justice system, promote rehabilitation and reduce recidivism (re-offending)
• First Step Act ineffective?

  doesn’t address those in state prison, only applied to people sentenced after December 2018