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Marquise Toppin
Professor Somdahl-Sands
4/24/16
Seminar in Political Science
Mass Incarceration within the Nation
America has the highest prison population in the world. Of that population the majority is
consisted of the minority within the country, but why is that? During the 70’s America started its
infamous War on Drugs which forever changed American society. The War on Drugs has led to
the mass incarceration of African Americans in the U.S. in order to show this I will be looking at
the increase in the prison population since the 1970’s. I will first explain what the War on Drugs
is and what laws/changes came into existence because of it. Then I will look into how it directly
leads to the mass incarceration of African Americans.
For my paper I will be focusing on the War on Drugs and the link between it and the
mass incarceration of African Americans in America. Since the beginning of the War on Drugs
there has been a major increase of inmates in the prison system. Many of these inmates are made
up of African Americans and many drug related arrests occur in African American communities.
According to the book “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander, the War on Drugs was
made to fulfil a hidden agenda. In the book it says “The War on Drugs is a racist conspiracy to
put blacks in their place”. Studies from it show that there has been a dramatic increase in the
prison population (majority consisting of African Americans) from the start of the War on Drugs
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until now. African Americans are disproportionately represented in the U.S penal system.
Studies from the article “Corporations Go to Prisons: The Expansion of Corporate Power in the
Correctional Industry” by Tracy F. H. Chang and Douglas E. Thompkins show that over recent
years there has been a huge increase in the prison population. Within the past 20 years or so you
can see that America’s prison population has quadrupled at the very least.
The emergence of the new drug known as crack helped launch the War on Drugs. Soon
after that crack spread to the black communities throughout the country. Both the book “The
New Jim Crow” and the article “Corporations Go to Prisons: The Expansion of Corporate Power
in the Correctional Industry” talk about the increase in the prison population since the creation of
War on Drugs and who makes up majority of the prison population. But “The New Jim Crow”
focuses more on how African Americans have and are still being affected by the War on Drugs
and the negative impacts they have to face because of it. The article “Corporations Go to
Prisons” focuses more on the prisons themselves and the creation of private prisons since the
War on Drugs began. Out of these two sources most of the major points of my paper will be
coming from “The New Jim Crow” because of how it closes in specifically of how African
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Americans have been targeted by the War on Drugs. It mentions in one of its studies that “In
major cities wracked by the drug war, as many as 80% of young African American men now
have criminal records and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives”.
Other sources that I have looked at include “Diminishing Returns: Crime and
Incarceration in the 1990’s” by Jenni Gainsborough and Marc Mauer and “Evaluating the
Effectiveness of Correctional Education” by Lois M. Davis, Robert Bozick, Jennifer L. Steele,
Jessica Saunders, and Jeremy N.V. Miles. The article “Diminishing Returns: Crime and
Incarceration in the 1990’s” continues to verify some facts that have already been researched in
the two sources that I’ve mentioned in the beginning of my paper. It shows that there has been a
dramatic increase in the prison population starting from the 1970’s until the present day. “The
scale of incarceration has expanded from about 330,000 Americans in prison and jail in 1972 to
nearly 2 million today” and it shows how the increase of people in prison for drug related arrests
have been contributing to the system “In 1984 drug offenders comprised only 7.6% of state
prison populations; by 1998 this percentage had nearly tripled to 20.7%”.
It mentions in “Diminishing Returns: Crime and Incarceration in the 1990’s” how the
most significant policy changes contributing to inmate population growth were drug offenders,
time served in prison, and parole violators. “Increases in the use of imprisonment in recent years
have been much more the result policy decisions-drug arrests, harsher sentencing policy, and
increased revocation of parole violators than changes in crime rates”. It also mentions a very
important fact about how the increase in drug arrests and the increase in the prison population
have done virtually nothing to solve the problem of drug use here in the country. “Another
indicator of drug abuse are household surveys, which show that drugs remain easily available,
suggesting that neither the mass arrest nor incarceration of drug offenders has reduced the
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availability of drugs”. “Diminishing Returns: Crime and Incarceration in the 1990’s” focuses not
only on the increase in the prison population, but also on the relationship between mass
incarceration and the crime rate, looking at how much does mass incarceration affect the increase
or decline of crime in states.
The article “Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education” focuses more on the
increase in prison population as well as the lack of education prisoners have and talks about
fixing it so that they aren’t at such a disadvantage compared to people outside of prison. For my
paper I’m not concerned with the education aspect when it comes to mass incarceration and the
prison system, so for this article I will most likely be using not as much as material from it than
some of my others sources. “Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education” like many
of my others looks at the growth in prison population. “The growth in the prison population for
the past 40 years has been well documented”. And it looks a little at those who are re-
incarcerated which is something else that I wasn’t originally focusing on for my paper “Within
three years of release, four out of ten U.S state prisoners will have committed new crimes or
violated the terms of their release and be re-incarcerated”.
Another article that I’m using called “5 Charts That Prove the War on Drugs Is a
Nightmare” by Kyle Jaeger focuses on five main points which are federal prisoners are being
given longer sentences than before the 1980’s, sentences have become increasingly harsh for
drug offenders, the war on drugs hasn’t stopped people from using illicit substances, federal law
enforcement agencies have been targeting mostly low-level drug offenders, and reduced
sentences does not translate into higher recidivism rates.
When it comes to harsh sentencing it says that “Harsh sentencing laws enacted in the
1980’s and 1990’s have resulted in a dramatic rise in the number of federal inmates serving for
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drug offenses …In the last 35 years, that number has increased from approximately 5,000 to
95,000 federal prisoners behind bars for drug related-arrests”. It talks about how ineffective the
War on Drugs has been. “The price of illicit substances, including heroin and cocaine, has
dropped significantly in the last two decades, and rates of drug use in the U.S have actually
increased since 1990”. This article talks about how longer sentencing started after the War on
Drugs began. “Lawmakers enacted dozens of Mandatory minimum sentencing laws that required
drug offenders to serve longer periods of confinement. They also established compulsory
sentence enhancement for certain drug offenders, including a doubling of penalties for repeat
offenders and mandatory life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for those convicted
of a third serious crime offense”. Harsh sentencing as well as the specific targeting of the African
American race seems to be two of the reasons America’s prison population is as huge as it is,
according to my sources. Another source that I decided to use in order to give me some more
information on America’s prison population, sentencing policies, other contributing factors to the
mass incarceration of African Americans, and how African Americans are specifically being
targeted is the “Criminal Justice Fact Sheet” found on the NAACP web page. It reiterates the fact
that the U.S has a ridiculously high prison population. “Today the U.S is 5% of the world
population and has 25% of world prisoners”. Some may not be convinced that African
Americans are being specifically targeted, but the sheet gives some convincing research that
suggests otherwise. “African American now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million
incarcerated population”, “African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of
whites”, and “According to unlocking America, if African American and Hispanics were
incarcerated at the same rates of whites, today’s prison and jail populations would decline”.
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These are only a few pieces of information from this source that seems to back up the
claim that African Americans are being targeted. It then goes on to talk about sentencing policies
when it comes to drug offenses. “5 times as many whites are using drugs as African American,
yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of whites” and
“African Americans serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as
whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months)”.
From this source the other contributing factors that it list that it sees has also added to the
mass incarceration of African Americans include, “Mandatory minimum sentencing, especially
disparities in sentencing for crack and powder cocaine possession” and the “Get tough on crime”
and “War on drugs policies”.
Most people have at least heard the term the War on Drugs at least one time if not more,
but what exactly is the War on Drugs? The modern War on Drugs was a campaign launched by
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President Richard Nixon and later further escalated by President Ronald Reagan to deter and
stop/reduce drugs from being sold and used within the country. It seems and sounds like a noble
cause but it soon became clear that this may have just been used to hide what was truly trying to
be accomplished, which was the destruction within the African American community.
Nixon demonized drug users/addicts during his term in order to shift public support in his
favor. In the article “The War on Drugs: How President Nixon Tied Addiction to Crime” by
Emily Dufton she explains how Nixon does this. “First, Nixon launched a drug war that framed
drug users not as alienated youths whose addiction was caused by inhabiting a fundamentally
inequitable society, but as criminals attacking the moral fiber of the nation, people who deserved
only incarceration”. Nixon’s goal seemed to have been to make drug users seem less than human
so that the public wouldn’t care or have any empathy for them. If the public doesn’t care about
what happens to them than anything could be done to them such as locking all of them up in
mass numbers. “Nixon exonerated the white middle class from responsibility for the drug-related
violence ravaging the inner cities. Second, he transformed the public image of the drug user into
one of a dangerous and anarchic threat to American civilization”.
By doing this the idea that mass incarceration for drug users could be seen as the only
way to stop drug crime and to clean up the streets, making the country once again safe. Nixon’s
propaganda about drugs and its threat to the country frightened the public and added much
needed fuel to the fire which worked in his favor. In the article “Who’s Using and Who’s Doing
Time: Incarceration, the War on Drugs, and Public Health” by Lisa D. Moore and Amy Elkavich
it sums up the effect that the drug propaganda had and who exactly is the target for this Drug
War. “A broad moral panic about crime fueled by media headlines and political expediency
created the need to escalate the war on drugs. The outcome has increased incarceration produced
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by tougher laws and prosecution, less judicial discretion, and greater policing. Because these
laws are not enforced equally, most often the poor and people of color who are financially or
socially unable to remove themselves from environments that are labeled “drug areas””. Looking
at the article “Reagan’s Drug War Legacy” by Jeralyn Merritt she focuses on Reagan’s
participation in the War on Drugs. “Federal sentencing guidelines: Under this new method of
sentencing, which went into effect in 1987, prison time is determined mostly by the weight of the
drugs involved in the offense. Parole was abolished and prisoners must serve 85 percent of their
sentence. Except in rare situations, judges can no longer factor in the character of the defendant,
the effect of incarceration on his or her dependents, and in large part, the nature and
circumstances of the crime. The only way to receive a more lenient sentence is to act as an
informant against others and hope that the prosecutor is willing to deal. The guidelines in effect
stripped Article III of their sentencing discretion and turned it over to prosecutors”. The Anti-
Drug Abuse of Act of 1988 also came into effect under Reagan’s watch “This law established a
federal death penalty for "drug kingpins." President Reagan called it a new sword and shield in
the escalating battle against drugs, and signed the bill in his wife's honor”.
One of the things that came out of the War on Drugs was harsh new sentencing laws
which significantly prolonged the amount of time people were now being kept in prisons. The
first set of these harsh laws that have caused a lasting impact are known as “The Rockefeller
Drug Laws” which came into place during the early 1970’s in New York. These laws along with
the three strikes law embodied the new attitude of getting tough on crime. Even if it were small
time criminals being sentenced for petty crimes it was now out of the hands of judges because
they had no choice but sentence the ones being convicted to the new mandatory sentence.
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In the article “The Drug Laws that Changed How We Punish” by Brian Mann he talks
about how The Rockefeller Drug Laws increased the number of drug related arrests but did
nothing to decrease crime, it only help increase the prison population. “He called for something
unheard of: mandatory prison sentences of 15 years to life for drug dealers and addicts even
those caught with small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, or heroin”. This was the beginning to the
trend we now see today in which people are now spending significantly longer periods of times
in prison which adds to the reason why prisons are so over populated. According to the article
“40th anniversary of the Rockefeller Drug Laws: A Window of Opportunity For a Better Path”
by Anthony Papa says “The Rockefeller Laws made New York’s prisons become a merciless
machine, destroying families and lives, and locking up tens of thousands of first-time offenders,
many addicted to drugs”. It didn’t take long to see that minorities mainly African Americans
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were being targeted being and locked away.
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The graph above is from “The Sentencing Project” and it shows the dramatic increase in
the U.S prison system. It’s noticeable that the graph dramatically increases around the time the
War on Drugs begins which is no coincidence. Before the War on Drugs it can be seen that the
number of people within the prison system barely went over more than 200,000 people. For more
over the past ten years the numbers have increased to well over 1,000,000 people. It’s hard to
believe that the War on Drugs has had such a negative impact on our society and how quickly it
was able to change things in a counterproductive way. African Americans are the ones who make
up the majority of this prison population even though African Americans are the minority group
in this country, and are greatly outnumbered by Caucasians.
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Above is a chart from “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2016” by Peter Wagner and
Bernadette Rabuy. It shows that majority of the prison population is located within the state
prison system. Of the 1,351,000 people in state prisons, 212,000 people are there because of drug
related arrests. The second largest prison population belongs to the local jails where 115,000
people are there who aren’t convicted and 45,000 who are convicted. The third largest which
would be the federal prison system consists of 105,000 people who are there because of drugs.
Looking at the youth population there are 1,900 who are there because of drugs. It says
on the chart that 2.3 million Americans are in prison. Of that 2.3 million the majority is consisted
of African Americans, males more than women. In the article “Mass Incarceration: The Whole
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Pie 2016” it points out the fact that there isn’t a correct representation of inmates who are there
for drug offenses. The reason for this is that there are inmates who are in prisons for multiple
offenses (which could have involved a drug offense). This would increase the number of people
if we were to count those who were in jail for drug related crimes. According to the article
published by The Washington Post called “America has locked up so many black people it has
wrapped our sense of reality” by Jeff Guo “Over the past 40 years, the prison population has
quintuples…Black men are imprisoned at six times the rate of white men. In 2003, the Bureau of
Justice Statistics estimated that black men have a 1 in 3 chance of going to federal or state prison
in their lifetimes”.
It goes on to say that “One in nine black children has had a parent behind bars.
One in thirteen black adults can’t vote because of their criminal records”. This article talks about
the statistics that show racial difference when it comes to the prison system. It also talks about
the negative affects it has on the black community and how it has changed the economy. African
Americans are no more likely to commit a crime than someone of another race, yet they are
constantly depicted as criminals or thugs. The media does a great job at showing African
Americans in a negative light to our society. Those who have never met an African American
would only have these negative images to go off of and it will cause them to have a troublesome
mindset. This is another reason why African Americans are targeted by law enforcement, they
automatically see them as a threat because of the image attached to them. Just as Nixon
portrayed drug addicts/users as people who weren’t human, the same is being done to African
Americans as it always have. The mass incarceration of African Americans is nothing more than
a legalized way to once again oppress a race of people because of the color of their skin.
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The article “America has locked up so many black people it has wrapped our sense of
reality” also points out that when measuring the unemployment of both black and white men it
only accounts for the ones who are living in a home while at the same time actively seeking
some type of employment. The article gives a clear depiction of the racial gap when it comes to
this subject. It says “According to a Wonkblog analysis of government statistics, about 1.6
percent of prime-age white men (25 to 54 years old) are institutionalized. If all those 590,000
people were recognized as unemployed, the unemployment rate for prime-age white men would
increase from about 5 percent to 6.4 percent. For prime-age black men, though, the
unemployment rate would jump from 11 percent to 19 percent. That’s because a far higher
fraction of black men-7.7 percent, or 580,000 people-are institutionalized”.
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The chart above is also from the article “America has locked up so many black people it
has wrapped our sense of reality”. It shows the huge gap between the two groups which consist
of high school dropouts which include those who are currently in the prison system. When you
compare Black men to White men, you can see it’s nearly doubled. It focuses a little bit on the
high school dropouts and how many go on to be employed. According to the article “Only about
54 percent of young white male high-school dropouts had jobs in 2014. And only 25 percent of
their black counterparts were employed”. This number would be much higher if you were to take
out all of those who are currently in prison.
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This chart is from the article “For small amounts of marijuana, blacks are far more likely
than whites to go to jail in Charlotte” from the newspaper the Charlotte Observer it shows how
more blacks are being arrested when it comes to Marijuana which falls under a drug related
arrests. “Since 2014, Charlotte Mecklenburg Police have made 3,700 arrests or citations for
possessing less than a half-ounce of marijuana. Those were “sole charges,” meaning the people
weren’t charged with anything else”. Of the 3,700 the article points out that 74 percent of the
people were Black while 18 percent were White. This chart shows not only that many people
who African American are being arrested because of drug related offenses, but also that they are
being singled out and targeted when compared to Whites. Referring back to the 3,700 arrests of
citations for possessing marijuana only 1,961 were arrested, but there is a problem when you
look at percentage of what group was arrested the most. “During that time, police were far more
likely to arrest blacks for possession rather than giving them a citation. Of the 1,961 people
arrested for possession, 91 percent were black. Whites were 9 percent of those arrested”.
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The charts above are from an article published by the Huffington Post called “Just How
Much the War on Drugs Impacts Our Overcrowded Prisons”. It shows how much of a role drug
offenses play with bringing inmates into the prison system. It’s overwhelming compared to the
other offenses that are listed, drug offenses alone makes up about 50 percent of the chart and
accounts for the most number of inmates. This article looks at how much more easily offenders
are being sent to jail no matter the crime because of mandatory minimum sentencing. The article
points this out when it says “the single most important element in explaining the record
incarceration numbers both at the federal and state levels could be “mandatory minimum”
sentencing requirements, under which federal and state law over the past two decades has
automatically required certain prison sentences for certain crimes, particularly for drug
offences”.
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The chart above is also from the article “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2016”. It
shows the steady increase over past decades in the number of arrests for drug possession. By the
mid 90’s you can see that at least one million people are now being arrested for drug possession.
These charts from that I have used from some of my sources not only show me the role that drug
related cases have on the prison system, but also that a specific group is being mostly targeted
which in turn is hurting that community. The War on Drugs which really took off in the 80’s is to
blame for this phenomenon. The mass incarceration of African Americans in the U.S is as
relevant today as it’s ever been. In the “The New Jim Crow” mass incarceration is referred to as
the new caste system of today just like Jim Crow and slavery used to be. It portrays it perfectly
when it says “Mass incarceration, is a system that locks people not only behind actual bars in
actual prisons, but also behind virtual bars and virtual walls- walls that area invisible to the
naked eye but function nearly as effectively as Jim Crow laws once did at locking people of
color into a permanent second-class citizenship”.
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The two charts above are from “Prison Policy Initiative” these two charts again show the
racial prejudice that the War on Drugs creates within the prison system. According to the chart as
of 2010 almost half of the African American population is incarcerated in U.S prison systems.
The more I look at the graphs the more it becomes clear to me that the War on Drugs is just as
Michelle Alexander said “The Drug War is the new Jim Crow”. Alexander makes a good point
when she also says “Mass incarceration in the United States had, in fact, emerged as a stunningly
comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner
strikingly similar to Jim Crow”. The reason Alexander keeps comparing the prison system to the
Jim Crow laws is because it can be seen as the new version of it. It clearly targets African
Americans, and the policies surrounding the system seems to specifically support the agenda of
locking up and keeping in as many prisoners as possible. The chart above shows the racial
segregation that this prison system creates within our country. It carries on the job that the Jim
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Crow laws once did by making African Americans 2nd class citizens, by having their rights taken
away. In “The New Jim Crow” it says “The current system of control permanently locks a huge
percentage of the African American community out of the mainstream society and economy”.
Compared to other countries the U.S is the only one who locks up a particular race at such
alarming rates. Looking at the graph below from the “International Centre for Prison Studies &
Bureau of Justice National Prisoner Statistics” you can see the number of African American
males during mid-2013 who were in state, local, and federal prisons. In the article “The Black
Male Incarceration Problem Is Real and It’s Catastrophic” by Antonio Moore it points out “To
give a lens for viewing this data India is a country of 1.2 Billion people, the country in total only
has around 380,000 prisoners. In fact, there are more African American men incarcerated in the
U.S. than the total prison populations in India, Argentina, Canada, Lebanon, Japan, Germany,
Finland, Israel and England combined”.
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In my opinion the War on Drugs have not only lead to the mass incarceration of African
Americans in the U.S it has also lead to the destruction of African American communities and
have seriously crippled the African American race from progressing. The War on Drugs is
responsible for the absence of African American Males within the household which leads to
broken families within the African American community. When it comes to crime, law
enforcement are way more likely to go after and make sure they arrest African Americans vs
Caucasians. It seems every time we think we score a victory for equality in this country there is
always a new oppressive plan that’s put in place to replace the old one. When you think about it
the War on Drugs didn’t fail, it did exactly what it was supposed to do.
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References
1. Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness. , 2010. Print.
2. Chang, T. F. H., & Thompkins, D. E. (2002). Corporations go to prisons: The
expansion of corporate power in the correctional industry.
3. Davis, Lois M., Robert Bozick, Jennifer L. Steele, Jessica Saunders and Jeremy N. V.
Miles. Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education: A Meta-Analysis of
Programs That Provide Education to Incarcerated Adults. Santa Monica, CA: RAND
Corporation, 2013.
4. http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet
5. Jaeger, Kyle. 5 Charts That Prove the War on Drugs Is a Nightmare. Published by
ATTN August 31, 2015.
6. Wagner, Peter. "Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2016." Mass Incarceration: The
Whole Pie 2016. Prison Policy Initiative, Mar.-Apr. 2016. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
7. Harrison, Steve. "For Small Amounts of Marijuana, Blacks Are Far More Likely than
Whites to Go to Jail in Charlotte." Charlotteobserver. N.p., 12 Feb. 2016. Web. 22
Apr. 2016.
8. Miles, Kathleen. "Just How Much The War On Drugs Impacts Our Overcrowded
Prisons, In One Chart." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 3 Apr. 2014.
Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
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9. Moore, Lisa D., and Amy Elkavich. "Who’s Using and Who’s Doing Time:
Incarceration, the War on Drugs, and Public Health?" American Journal of Public
Health. American Public Health Association, May 2008. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
10. Merritt, Jeralyn. "Reagan's Drug War Legacy." Alternet. N.p., 18 June 2004. Web. 22
Apr. 2016.
11. Moore, Antonio. "The Black Male Incarceration Problem Is Real and It's
Catastrophic." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 19 Apr. 2015. Web. 22
Apr. 2016.
12. Lopez, German. "How America Became the World's Leader in Incarceration, in 22
Maps and Charts." Vox. N.p., 11 Mar. 2016. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
13. Guo, Jeff. "America Has Locked up so Many Black People It Has Warped Our Sense
of Reality." Washington Post. The Washington Post, n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
14. Papa, Anthony. "40th7 Anniversary of the Rockefeller Drug Laws: A Window of
Opportunity for a Better Path." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 7 July
2013. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
15. Mann, Brian. "The Drug Laws That Changed How We Punish." NPR. NPR, 14 Feb.
2013. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
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