America: The Station of Mass IncarcerationMass incarceration has plagued Americans since the time of President Richard Nixon. As a result, lives have been ruined by the stigma on drug users and drug charges. Furthermore, money has lined the pockets of greedy monsters who make money to keep people incarcerated. I assume “out of sight, out of mind” is how people sleep while benefiting from mass incarceration. While they sleep, did you know that America is home to about 5% of the world's population, but is home to about 25% of the world's prison population? Did you know that the United States spends eighty billion dollars a year on incarceration? Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay. It costs local, state, and federal governments twenty thousand to fifty thousand a year to house inmates. Sending people to rehab through insurance for thirty days, which is the recommended time for rehab, costs twenty thousand to fifty thousand dollars, while sending people to college costs about as much. The most disheartening fact is that approximately fifty percent of our inmates rot in prison on nonviolent and drug charges. The stigma and criticism of marijuana is slowly being eliminated and states are starting to legalize weed. On the other hand, we continue to let people charged with marijuana sit in prison while the state makes money doing the same thing those men and women did to get locked up. I'm afraid to see where the future of legalization takes us, depending on who's in charge. The “War on Drugs” is the most commonly condemned for the genesis of this movement over what appeared to be the war on the mentally ill and the poor. . It all started with Richard Nixon. In the 1960s, drugs were the symbol of restless youth, of escape, of the beginning of a mutinous revolt among citizens. The drug served as a reaction to the unfortunate reality Americans were living in with Nixon, the Vietnam War, and the obvious lack of opportunity in America for a certain type of people. The Drug Policy Alliance quoted one of Nixon's top aides, John Ehrlichman, as showing who and what the Nixon administration really cared about: “You want to know what it was really about. The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House thereafter, had two enemies: the anti-war left and blacks. You understand what I'm saying. We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be anti-war or to be black, but by getting the public to associate hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then heavily criminalizing both, we could destroy those communities... Did we know they were lying about drugs? Of course we did. Presidents who use fearmongering need a boogeyman, something to pretend to save us from. A brief period of consolation took place when Jimmy Carter was elected into office. Unlike Nixon, Jimmy Carter wanted to decriminalize pot. I think the way Jimmy Carter handled other political endeavors made Americans tired of him and convinced the public that they needed a conservative president. Then, as a devastating result, we got Ronald Regan in 1981. Similar to Trump, Ronald Reagan was also a celebrity who pretended to understand the middle classes and convinced them that he was running to improve their quality of life. He had a strong anti-drug ideology. “The number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug law crimes increased from 50,000 in 1980 to more than 400,000 in 1997.” Nancy Reagan began the anti-drug campaign“Just Say No,” which also inspired an LAPD chief to start the DARE drug education program. The same police chief named Daryl Gates also publicly stated that "casual drug users should be taken out and shot." He seemed to inspire some people in positions of authority already fueled by hate and the Reagans lit a fire for them with a soapbox to stand on. While Reagan was in office, he began cutting funding and ending harm reduction programs and exchanging needles, which was also the beginning of the worsening HIV/AIDS crisis that was ignored while he was president. While tens of thousands of people died from this epidemic, he remained almost completely silent. I think this is admiration's way of letting population control take its place while appearing to keep its hands clean. This administration has successfully managed to make drug use public enemy number one. “In 1985, the percentage of Americans surveyed who considered drug abuse the nation's “number one problem” was only 2 to 6 percent. The figure grew through the remainder of the 1980s until, in September 1989, it reached a remarkable 64 percent – ​​one of the most intense fixations by the American public on any issue in the history of polling.” As the Reagan administration instilled fear in Americans, some people died, others were locked in cages on petty drug charges, many more died of HIV/AIDS. The most ironic thing about the Reagan years is that by the end of his term, adolescent marijuana use had increased. Their “bogeyman” failed because curiosity killed the false rhetoric with which they attempted to brainwash young Reaganites. To me it's quite poetic. “We talk about mass incarceration but we continue to view crime only as an individual-level phenomenon, blaming poor decision-making, poor parenting and a lack of respect for law and order. Somehow, we ignore mass pressures at the community level: institutionalized racial privilege and disadvantage, labor market failures, and poverty. We talk about mass incarceration by offering only individual-level solutions – usually punishment – ​​and offer little to promote healing of harm or treatment of mental illness, for individuals or communities.” Considering the amount of money the United States spends on incarceration each year, the least we can do is help prisoners have a smoother transition into the real world. You have the ability to get your GED when you are incarcerated, but we desperately need higher education classes or to establish vocational school classes. Knowledge is the one thing people can't take away from you. So, being able to bring a new trade, skill, or new knowledge into the real world shows potential employers that you are more than your past accusations and shortcomings. First, when you get out, you are required to give parole. official an address. Many times families cannot host these people because they are tired of them or no longer speak to their family members. If you are lucky enough to have the money saved up to get your own house, you need to find a place that is criminal-friendly, which is difficult especially under time pressure. If you don't find a place to stay, you will violate probation or parole because you are homeless. If you want to try to go back to college, you can't get financial aid to pay for school. You can't vote when you leave, which means your voice won't be significant or important in America's future. When you are a.”