User talk:Forkupine/sandbox

The 13th amendment rendered slavery illegal with the exception of prisoners. After slavery, many laws were passed in order to target the black populations in America.[mention the black codes/jim crow to support statement] This lead to mass incarceration. [always put a first name on a first mention]Graff theorizes that this has become the case because the people with the privilege and power to stop it are ashamed of slavery. Whether they are ashamed of profiting from slavery or coming from slaves, the shame obfuscates the problem[.] Graff, G. (2015). Redesigning Racial Caste in America via Mass Incarceration. The Journal of Psychohistory 43 (2).

In the 1970s, litigation was passed in Florida to alleviate the problem of prison overcrowding and inadequate health conditions for prisoners. These sorts of laws were championed by progressive lawyers and judges who were concerned with civil rights. In the 1980s, the political climate changed with the War on Drugs. The litigation used to ease prison crowding was used as legal precedent to build more prisons. In this way, laws that were meant to alleviate poor prison conditions inadvertently helped create the problem of mass incarceration as we know it. Schoenfeld, H. (2010). Mass Incarceration and the Paradox of Prison Conditions Litigation. Law & Society Review, 44(3/4), 731-767. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40926316/

Forkupine (talk) 00:20, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

[VR: This is a good start. I think you could bridge slavery and the current institution of mass incarceration a little more clearly. The War on Drugs is quite relevant, expansion may be needed in order to fully address it's relevance. In order to make this page easy to read for someone just learning what Mass Incarceration is you may need a clearer introduction.]Valentinaravenswood (talk) 20:12, 2 November 2016 (UTC)