Parole should be reinstalled to combat mass incarceration

[discocrisco01]

As part of its “tough on crime” initiative, the U.S. government abolished federal parole in 1987. As a result, prison turned from an institution of rehabilitation to a multibillion dollar industry that benefits from the free labor of incarcerated minorities. Since then, 16 states have eliminated parole, resulting in prison overpopulation, long sentences and mass incarceration. Reinstating parole is pivotal to ending mass incarceration, a system which thrives on imprisoning people of color for long periods of time.

The abolition of parole is rooted in racism. Parole was eradicated partially due to former President Richard Nixon’s war on drugs, when he introduced mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants. Marketed to the public as a way to reduce drug-related crime in the country, Nixon’s actions were instead used to incarcerate the anti-war left and Black people by criminalizing minor drug offenses. Over the next few decades, political hysteria around drugs caused a rapid increase in the U.S. prison population, which grew from 200,000 in 1970 to 1.6 million in 2006. And with restricted parole, prison transformed from a place of rehabilitation to an institution that disproportionately imprisons Black people and puts them to work for their entire lives with no chance of redemption. Parole, however, can change that.

Read more at https://emorywheel.com/parole-should-be-reinstalled-to-combat-mass-incarceration/

[lark]

1. Parole itself is a tool to keep people in jail & not be productive citizens.

You have to be able to get to your parole officer at any time within an hour of the request. This is really hard when you are working a regular job, most er won't put up with it and fire you. Parole officers don't care, or lots of them don't anyway. You can't drive, and generally have little-no $$, so how do you get to all the meetings they demand and pay the monthly fees of up to $200-$400/month and have no job? FL uses parole as a tool to hurt minorities and poor and keep them in a near permanent criminal state. This is not the way to go.

[ratchiweenie]

2. Oh so true. There has to be a better way.

[lark]

3. There are 100% better ways, but PTB make a ton of $$ off prisons, prisoners.

They don't want anything better, they don't want productive citizens, they want folks to stay in the prison system for the fantastic profits they get and have policies to ensure this happens to everyone who needs to work.