It blows my mind how profitable incarcerating people has become in the second half of the 20th century. Local law enforcement agencies in the United States are under a system in which there is financial incentive to round up large amounts of people and incarcerate them for gain. The Edward Byrne Memorial state and local law enforcement assistance program fun law enforcement agencies that follow the drug war agenda and forfeiture laws let law enforcement literally take money out of people’s pockets.
There is also the blatant racism in some of these laws that I actually can’t believe something hasn’t been done about them yet. There is a massive difference in the amount of consent and pretext searches that are done on white people and people of color. People of color are being searched at much higher rates. In a state in which officers can search just about anyone they want, is it really all that strange to see their racial biases exposed through their work?
There’s also the controversy with crack cocaine holders who are predominantly black getting longer sentences than powder cocaine users who are predominantly white. At all levels of the law, minorities of low socioeconomic status have the short end of the stick. Many even have no choice but to plead guilty because it’s the most socioeconomically feasible thing to do even if they are innocent.
