In regards to the United States incarceration system, this first piece by Norbal Morris and David J. Rothman discusses the system in action in the west-coast state of California. This may be personal bias but I do not think that this issue is a new issue that people are going to be surprised to hear about. The prison system, as the article states, has adopted this principle of mass-incarceration of people for misdemeanors like drug possession since before many of us in this class were even born. The reason given is that there is an “excess” of people–too many people with low-income jobs. The remedy proposed was a series of laws that would effectively put these people into a cyclic machine that would be more productive (in terms of revenue generation) than their current low to no income activities would. I think that if we could find a way to give these people a way to integrate into society more successfully, we would have less of a difficult time appeasing people who are supportive of this current system.

Question: With this mass-incarceration system being tied to the war on drugs, how can we separate the two now that they have become so thoroughly interlinked?