Incarceration In Prison

INTRODUCTION
The prison population has nearly tripled since 1987 from 585,084 to 1,612,395 prisoners in 2010 (Guerino, Harrison, & Sabol, 2011). These increased numbers are due to strict crime policies such as the “war on drugs” and “get tough on crime” attitudes. Correctional facilities have become the go-to method to pushing away offenders from the population and as the numbers of incarcerated increases so do the collateral consequences. In this mainstream society, incarceration and its accompanying invisible barriers such as employment, welfare, and education have become a problem to offender re-integration into the society.
EMPLOYMENT
Each year, prisoners get released nationwide and immediately face serious barriers to social reintegration …show more content…
The arrest box isn’t illegal, however, there have been a growing number of jurisdictions across the country that have adopted legislations restricting employer’s ability to run criminal background checks. An example of this is “ban the box”, the legislative intent of these laws is to prevent discrimination against a person on the basis of criminal records. Americans with Criminal Records also shows that 60 percent of formerly incarcerated individuals are unemployed one year after being released; and those who do manage to find employment take home 40 percent less pay annually than a regular person would take home. Lastly, these findings show that criminal records can create major barriers to finding employment and receiving a decent amount of income to live a stable life. These are potential reasons why an individual may choose to get involved in criminal activities again. Further data that support this claim is a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) which shows that within five years of release, nearly three-quarters of ex-offender’s released in 2005 came into contact with the criminal justice system and more than half returned to prison for either being convicted for the same offense or a different type of …show more content…
2002). There are seven types of social exclusions discussed in (Murray, 2007) the first is, pre-existing social exclusion, meaning that ex-offenders and their families appear to be some of the most disadvantaged members of society such as minority groups. Second, loss of material and social capital following imprisonment, meaning that ex-offenders suffer a loss of economic resources for themselves and their families. There is also the exclusion through stigma, meaning that once you engage in criminal activity and go to jail or prison society has a notion to always view you as a criminal. This aspect of social exclusion negatively affects the children of the offenders, because of their vulnerability; if they grow up constantly hearing that they are criminals there is a possibility that the stigma they encounter would turn into a reality. According to the Child Welfare League of America projects “Approximately 50 percent of the children of the incarcerated will enter the juvenile system before their eighteenth birthday” (Browning et al.). The children of the incarcerated are most likely to grow in single-parent homes (typically single mothers) families in low-income neighborhoods, it may become hard for these single mothers to control their children activities or neighborhood

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