The United States has the highest incarceration rate among developed countries and the rest of the world. The question “why” is always asked. To understand the answer to this question, a look back into history is necessary. There is no specific moment in history that would indicate it is the sole factor in the increase in mass incarceration in the United States. Rather, there have been various law enforcement campaigns and numerous policies that have contributed to the rise of incarceration in the United States. The key feature here is “change over time”, each policy or campaign leads to the next and the effects build on each other. That said, the gradual growth of federal/state government power, and a changing view of race and crime over time, are the most important causes of the increase in mass incarceration in the United States. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay To see how these causes led to mass incarceration, we must start in the 1920s with the Prohibition era. The motivation for Prohibition was in part to improve American health and well-being. But this was a peripheral concern to the more central rationale for implementing the policy that would make it more difficult for low-income racial/ethnic minority groups to organize politically. It was then that the nation's underlying prejudices began to emerge even more than in the past, prejudices that would continue and grow for the next 60 years and beyond. This was obvious because the government's enforcement of Prohibition was overwhelmingly directed toward poorer regions and working-class neighborhoods, rather than wealthier areas. Not surprisingly, Prohibition had strong support among groups like the KKK. The dry mission gave them an excuse to legitimize their anti-Catholic, anti-immigration, anti-Semitic and white supremacist agenda. During this era, supporting Prohibition meant being on the side of “respectable” morality and upstanding American values, which were believed to be under attack by un-American ideals. Changing views of race/ethnicity and crime had begun to become more acceptable as a national issue. Not only did Prohibition bring traditional prejudices and racism to the forefront of political and criminal debates, but it quietly increased federal power as a means to help alleviate social problems. The effort to enforce Prohibition led to an unprecedented expansion of the federal state in the 1920s, as many resources were needed to enforce and punish violators. The Federal Bureau of Prohibition was created to monitor and enforce the law itself in 1919. Within that organization alone there was a 100% increase in field agent staffing, from 1500 to 3000 agents by 1926. There it was also an expansion of the penal system, and various sanctions such as conditional release were introduced because the prisons were increasingly crowded. The Federal Bureau of Prisons was also created to manage the prisons that were becoming so widely used. The FBI has had a massive expansion, and federal police forces have grown and used invasive new tactics like wiretaps to expose criminals. This directly paved the way for a subsequent expansion of the federal state in the 1970s and 1990s with the war on drugs. In many ways, Prohibition was the drug war of the 1920s. Much of the rhetoric and social anxieties were the same. When it came tohow alcohol and drugs were perceived, these were always associated with ethnic/racial and lower class criminality. The government was gaining more resources and charting entirely new terrains of enforcement and power. On the other hand law enforcement now had obvious targets to arrest due to the fact that some groups were linked to prohibition violations. Mass incarceration made its debut during Prohibition because of the growing emphasis on the need for more government involvement in the battle against rising crime and because race/ethnicity was becoming increasingly associated with crime. While Prohibition laid the foundation for the new penal state that was emerging, the War on Drugs picked up the torch that Prohibition had already lit. The War on Drugs took to the extreme what Prohibition had begun in terms of racial and minority prejudice, as well as broad federal power. One of the major effects of the War on Drugs was the slow elimination of the Fourth Amendment. For example, the Fourth Amendment provides security against unreasonable searches and seizures without probable cause or a warrant. Until the War on Drugs, courts had been “fairly tough” in upholding these rights. But within a few years of the War on Drugs, a shift began in terms of the relationship between citizens and police regarding these rights. Virtually all constitutionally protected civil liberties were threatened by the War on Drugs. This means that new legal loopholes have been created whereby anyone could become a target of police drug enforcement. Under the Fourth Amendment, police could not stop and search someone without a warrant unless they could show probable cause. However, the amendment was modified after the US Supreme Court ruling Terry v. Ohio in 1968. It was changed to mean that if police officers observe that the person “may be armed and currently dangerous,” they have the right to conduct a limited weapons search. Today the police no longer need to believe that people are dangerous to stop and search them, as long as the individual consents. Another tool that law enforcement has relied on during the war on drugs has been pretextual stops. This is a traffic stop intended not to enforce traffic laws but to search for drugs despite the absence of evidence. Just like consent searches, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed pretextual blocks with the backing of the law. A motorist who refuses to consent to a search may still be arrested for minor traffic violations, or the police may bring in a drug dog to obtain probable cause. The DEA has even trained its agents on how to use pretext traffic stops and consensual searches as gateways to drug searches. Instead of training officers to spot violators, it teaches them to take a “volume-based approach” and ends up overwhelming large numbers of innocent people. If people thought they had certain rights to protect themselves from police officers, they soon discovered that the Fourth Amendment was unable to significantly limit police in the War on Drugs. As a result, mass incarceration had become even more possible because it was now legally easier to arrest people and side with the officer in finding them guilty. These new rules to fight the war on drugs allowed the rounding up of large numbers of Americans. for minor and non-violent crimes. This was also what he gave to the policediscretion over who posed a threat and who did not. Coincidentally, blacks and minorities seemed to meet the needs of most officers. A drug law enforcement is different from most other types of law enforcement because there is no clear victim. Because it's not that clear, law enforcement has to strategize who to target and how, and there's a lot of room for opinions to creep in or mistakes to occur. In addition to this ambiguity, the media has changed its reporting to sensationalize an “us versus them” narrative, where “they” are black American drug dealers. This portrayal solidified the image of a black criminal dealing drugs in the eyes of law enforcement. In many ways, the word crime became a code word for black. Law enforcement officials were then exposed to these images and coded language, reinforcing prejudices. It should be noted that unconscious and conscious cognitive biases tend to lead to discrimination, even when the person does not believe they are. Regardless, once blackness and crime became linked in public perception, prejudices became entrenched. It was as if people were waiting for permission to start blaming someone for a crime. As if that weren't enough, the U.S. Supreme Court adopted rules that maximized racial discrimination during the War on Drugs rather than protecting the rights of African Americans. The Court has also made it virtually impossible to challenge criminal justice racial bias under the Fourteenth Amendment. Instead of legally prohibiting racial discrimination in policing, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed it. Interestingly, many police departments publicly state that they do not racially profile when employing arrest tactics. This is despite the fact that they routinely use race as a factor in stops and searches. They are able to do this because the Court has essentially allowed the police to use race as a factor in this tactic. Almost all “race-neutral factors” are, in fact, race-based. These include targeting people who live in "high crime ghettos" or with criminal records and consequently people who usually tend to be black. The police actually choose to go looking for drugs in inner-city ghettos rather than white suburban neighborhoods. Poor blacks and minorities are easy targets because in many cases they have no political power and are confined to ghetto areas. In many ways, the militarization of law enforcement in these communities can be likened to an “occupation.” Yet police are able to defend themselves against accusations of racial bias because race is never the only reason given during stops and searches. Judges, for their part, are as reluctant to guess at the reasons for police motivations as prosecutors are. It's pretty absurd because law enforcement usually points to large numbers of minorities in prison as a reason to target them, without realizing that their detention is the product of that exact racial profiling. It's an endless cycle. The war on drugs and legal decisions so increased the racial/ethnic tensions initiated by prohibition that race and criminal behavior began to go hand in hand. Mass incarceration was favored because the police had few restrictions on who they could arrest, overlooking racial bias, so they were able to increase overall arrest rates by specifically targeting minorities and blacks. Politics hasplayed a major role in the rise of mass incarceration because a Much of the rhetoric about race and crime has really been reinforced with the help of politicians. The rise of what politicians called the “law and order” campaign coincided with the rise of the civil rights movement. Interestingly, in the South, law enforcement characterized the civil rights campaign as a breakdown of law and order. They began to characterize civil rights protests as criminal acts rather than political events. At the same time, crime tended to increase due to the growing male population of young adult offenders, which radicals linked to the civil rights movement. Unfortunately, some black activists, concerned about the reputation of inner cities, joined some law and order campaigns. They became unwittingly complicit in the boom in mass incarceration of black men, even though, ironically, many of the legislators who began the law and order movements were known segregationists. Law and order hysteria seemed to penetrate all neighborhoods and all political lines. This “law and order” rhetoric ultimately contributed to a significant realignment of political parties in the United States. At one time, the South was solidly Democratic and the North was largely Republican. Things changed when white Southern Democrats grew angry over their party's support for civil rights reforms. This led Republicans to realize that they could strengthen their party by recruiting anti-black Democrats. They began by arguing that poverty was not caused by “structural factors” but by black culture. Many white working-class voters also felt threatened by the sudden advancement of African Americans, and conservatives exploited that fear to mobilize. During the 1968 presidential election, both conservative candidates campaigned on "law and order," to reject the lawlessness of civil rights activists, and together won 57 percent of the vote. In 1972, many more voters determined their political leanings by race rather than class. And when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981, 22% of Democrats switched to the Republican Party to vote for him. After his election, his administration continued the war on drugs. The media has been used to sensationalize the use of crack, cocaine and other drugs in inner-city neighborhoods and particularly by minorities. At the same time, these inner-city communities were suffering from economic collapse due to a lack of jobs, so many turned to crime and drugs as a source of income or mental relief. The United States did not follow the lead of other countries such as Portugal that had faced similar epidemics and had emphasized treatment and prevention. Instead, the United States has introduced the death penalty for some drug crimes, mandatory minimum sentences, and even some civil penalties such as house eviction. Crack cocaine, associated with blacks, carried harsher punishments for distribution than powder cocaine, associated with whites. With all this, there was also a battle for the title of "toughest on crime" between Democrats and Republicans. The political environment incited a battle against poor white voters who felt threatened by blacks, thus creating a perfect environment to showcase mass incarceration (of blacks/minorities) as a form of reassurance. The prison population has exploded even more than it has before, and law enforcement budgets have seen a huge.