Modern Slavery in the US Prison System

In the past decades, the prison system, and the treatment of minorities in America have been under scrutiny. People looking to profit and exploit disadvantaged people have changed tactics throughout the years and today have ended up with what some call modern-day slavery through the American prison system. So, the question is really; Is it? Well, this essay will seek to analyze the challenges with the American prison system and discuss the role of private prisons within it and try to find out if slavery still exists within America’s borders.

To tackle the question of whether modern slavery really exists in the US a look at the past is needed.

In more recent times slavery, Jim Crow laws, and blatant racism and discrimination have become illegal and unacceptable to practice. People wanting to discriminate in this way have therefore been forced to change their strategy. In recent history “the black man” has been considered a criminal. They have been portrayed like that for ages, originating from the time of actual slavery, when the idea of inferiority and criminality was placed upon “the black man.” So, in the 1970s when, at that time, they had rising crime rates, the blame was easily placed on black people. The crime bills adopted in the years following, when the idea of inferiority and criminality was placed upon “the black man”So, in the 1970s when, at that time, they had rising crime rates, the blame was easily placed on black people. The crime bills adopted in the years following under Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton sought to crack down on this supposed problem. The blatant discrimination had now been replaced with a slightly more hidden and contrived way of harming black and minority communities. Particularly in the Reagan era with the start of the war on drugs, the precedent for future mass incarcerations under the following presidencies was put in place, with the Reagan administration enacting stricter laws on crack cocaine than powder cocaine, as this was more prevalent in minority communities. Future crime bills only made things worse and in this relatively short period of time, from the 1970s to the 2000s prison populations rose from 357,292 to 2,015,300. That’s an increase of over 600% percent in only 30 years. And due to the system discriminating against certain groups of people, the ratios of who is a part of this population are twisted to an extreme. When looking at data presented by The Pew Research Center, one doesn’t have to look for long to see the disparity between different ethnic groups. It shows that 33% of the US prison population is Black, while Black people only make out about 13% of the entire US population. White people make up 30% of the prison population while being 63% of the entire population, with Hispanic people making up 23% while they only make up 16% of the entire population. An obvious and terrible difference.