The Divide Summary

In Matt Taibbi’s book The Divide, the criminal justice system is revealed to have become a form of social control over the poor. Taibbi refers to this divide between rich and poor as “two systems in a vacuum,” where there are two separate systems depending on whether you’re rich or poor that people seem to accept. When looking at both systems in comparison, however, the system makes no sense. An example Taibbi uses throughout his book is the legal process of petty crimes, such as drug dealing or just sleeping on a park bench overnight, where, due to minimum sentencing laws, people have had to serve a minimum 20-year prison sentences. These are people that are poor and desperate enough to sleep on a cold park bench, but instead of giving them

The huge crime drop suggests that also smaller amount of people are taking part in crime or that people who do take part are obliging crimeless often. On the other hand a civilisation’s rate of crime is not a meek combination of the number of “crime-prone” entities with specific psychological or biological features. The impression that crime is communal rather than individual is a conspicuous melody in much of the finest new-fangled research. The crime drop partially imitates the effort of organisations that are unambiguously intended to escalate social control, but then again it as well imitates variations in further institutions aimed to achieve diverse societal purposes. No debate of current U.S. crime inclinations would be comprehensive without bearing in mind the U.S. prison inhabitants. For the reason that imprisonment rose so quickly, it is alluring to point the lion’s segment of the crime drop to the debilitating effects of prison. Numerous criminologists have faith that prisons are in fact criminogenic in the long-run, firming up criminal ties and unsettling non-criminal chances when convicts are unconfined. Looking at a study of the influence of imprisonment on crime, sociologist Bruce Western guesses that coarsely nine-tenths of the crime drop all through the 1990s would have happened without any variations in imprisonment, (Western, 2006). Economist Steven Levitt notes up to one third of the total drop to imprisonment. Increasing numbers of incarceration as a

The United States prison population has grown seven-fold over the past forty years, and many Americans today tend to believe that the high levels of incarceration in our country stem from factors such as racism, socioeconomic differences, and drugs. While these factors have contributed to the incarceration rate present in our country today, I argue that the most important reason our country has such a high incarceration rate is the policy changes that have occurred since the 1970s. During this time, the United States has enacted policy changes that have produced an astounding rise in the use of imprisonment for social control. These policy changes were enacted in order to achieve greater consistency, certainty, and severity and include sentencing laws such as determinate sentencing, truth-in-sentencing, mandatory minimum sentencing, and three strikes laws (National Research Council 2014). Furthermore, I argue that mandatory sentencing has had the most significant effect on the incarceration rate.

Punishment and Inequality in America starts off by informing the reader of how much of a mass imprisonment problem we have here in America. The first chapter is riddled with statistics of who is being imprisoned, for what reasons are they being jailed, and inequality we see within our prison systems. Such statistics include that black men are six to eight times more likely to be in prison than whites, and that close to one-third of black high school dropouts were incarcerated in the year 2000. Although the statistics are eye-opening, it by no means explains to us why these numbers are the way they are. What Western does try and explain through these numbers is a what he refers to as the risk

In any given year now, incarceration rates has tripled with approximately 13 million people introduced to American jails in any given year. This increase in the prison population far outpaced the crime rate and the US population growth. Today, America has around 5% of the world’s population but a quarter of the world’s prison population.

In this examination of economic inequality and the experience of punishment, I express how the American justice system fails to accommodate lower class criminals with the standards it equally guarantees to all citizens. Assessing each level of the correction process will allow me to shed light on the struggles that poor convicts face and apply theories which support my analyses. Highlighting the unsuccessful employment of equal due process, I

The past quarter century has seen an enormous growth in the American incarceration rate. Importantly, some scholars have suggested that the rate of prison growth has little to do with the theme of crime itself, but it is the end result of particular U.S. policy choices. Clear (2007) posits that "these policy choices have had well-defined implications for the way prison populations have come to replicate a concentrated occurrence among specified subgroups in the United States population in particular young black men from deprived communities" (p. 49).

During the 1970’s, the tough on crime movement contributed to a drastic increase in punishment for lesser crimes and led a massive increase in imprisonment, even though the crime rates stayed the same (Gascon 2014). It is disputed that even though the movement was attractive to voters, it is doing more harm than good. Ever since the 1960’s, the amount of individuals detained has increased roughly about ten times than normal (Gascon 2014). Expanding a prison population requires more places, such as prisons and jails, to detain prisoners and California had built “22 new prisons in just 30 years” (Gascon 2014). Building new prisons and detaining more prisoner’s costs money and this money will come out of taxpayers. Newt Gingrich and B. Wayne Hughes Jr. said in an editorial that “prison is for people that we are afraid of, but we have been filling them with many folks we are just mad at.” They also state if the proposition is passed it will bring some light on the face that over $60,000 is spent on one inmate alone per year, while less than $10,000 is spent on each student in schools (Gingrich and Hughes 2014). The American Civil Liberties Union, the Sentencing Project, and the Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice are also in favor of the proposition. Some of these groups agree with Gingrich and Hughes statements, the money

Prison Overcrowding: Prisons have become warehouses of human beings as opposed to institutions meant to provide a means to engage in restitution by delinquent individuals in society. “One necessary condition for rising incarceration rates has been the massive expansion in prison construction and capacity, without which prison populations could not have grown so dramatically” (Guetzkow & Schoon, 2015). As more prisons are being built, more delinquents are being incarcerated in order to fill them. “Prison facilities are filled 38 percent beyond rated capacity, with overcrowding being particularly acute in higher-security institutions” (Rowland, 2013).

Matt Taibbi’s The Divide uses extensive research and data to contradict the American idea of a nonpartisan justice system. Taibbi presents us with controversial statistics: While poverty increases, crime decreases, and the jail population has increased 600% since 1991 (page xvi). On the surface, our justice system may seem impartial. However, Taibbi reveals a more biased American court than one may expect. Following this further, Taibbi states while many are being prosecuted, others are not.

There are thus real and often quite complicated connections between the deindustrialization of the economy- a process that reached its peak during the 1980s—and the rise of mass imprisonment, which also began to spiral during the Reagan-Bush era. However, the demand for more prisons was represented to the public in simplistic terms. More prisons were needed because there was more crime. Yet many scholars have demonstrated that by the time the prison construction boom began, official crime statistics were already falling.” Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?” I believe that they are other ways to make a profit. Medical expenses, education, jobs are not free on both side but both make a profit. I believe that prison should be the last resort of punishment when rehabilitation has not made any change. When the people you arrest correlate with the amount of income then making the community safe is no longer your goal. To find people to arrest you must go to areas that you believe have no hope. This is like whites going to Africa and picking people out again because the fall into their horrific stereotypes. This later makes a a huge cycle that they take your father and label him as a criminal, so your mother now has given birth to mini

There comes a time, in most citizens’ lives when they must stand against their government to produce change. Change can only be acquired if people take the necessary actions for it to take place. Nelson Mandela was a historical revolutionist who helped his people in Africa, to revolt against the government, in order to bring about change. As a result, he was sentenced to prison for 27 years for trying to overthrow the government. Many revolutionist, such as Arundhati Roy and Martin Luther King Jr., explain in their essays how the role of the citizen is to stand against injustice, and how the government labels them as anti-national because of it.

Capitalism has been the central force behind the growth of the United States’ progressive economy. Within such advanced economic system the chances of economic disparity are significantly high. In fact, over the past three decades there has being a steady increase in unequal wealth distribution among the economic classes. To sustain the current unequal wealth distribution among the classes of the American population, there are numerous factors that influence and shape this trend. For some members of the population it is alarmingly disturbing to know that recent statistics have shown that, “In the US [alone] the wealthiest 1% of its population owns more than the bottom 95 %” (Gutman). As for the difference in economic wealth, it resulted

In America’s tough economic society, over population has become an exceedingly hot topic issue. However, overcrowding in America’s prison system has been a severe problem since the 1970's. The majority of the changes have come from different policies on what demographic to imprison and for what reason. The perspective of locking up criminals because they are "evil" is what spawned this (Allen, 2008). Because of this perspective the prison system in America is in need of serious reorganization. Since 1980, most states have one or more of their prisons or the entire system under orders from the federal courts to maintain minimum constitutional standards (Stewart, 2006).

When will we stop being unjust? Our society today is full of problems and issues. We not only experience economic and politic issues, but we face social problems as well. One main problem that our society must acknowledge is injustice. However, many members of our society are blind not to recognize that permitting unjust and unfair acts is an actual injustice. They believe it’s appropriate to judge others, to make inappropriate comments and to be disrespectful.