Annotated Bibliography

Are Minorities Only Incarcerated for Their Crimes or Are There Other Motives?

Thesis: Targets of incarceration seem to be a reoccurring pattern. Minorities in the United States are preyed upon in society and waited on to commit crimes in order to become a statistic. Their crimes are looked past upon when their skin is a different color, when their race seems alarming, and when their background defies norms. Even though crimes are committed, there are existing reasons why minorities are more likely to end up behind bars.

DeFina, R., & Hannon, L. (2013). The Impact of Mass Incarceration on Poverty. Crime & Delinquency, 59(4), 562-586. doi:10.1177/0011128708328864

Poverty in the U.S has grown over the past 30 years, and so have incarceration rates. The article tries to prove how mass incarceration has been deterring the reduction of poverty. The authors conduct studies on three different levels of poverty, from 1980 to 2004, in order to find out the impact mass incarceration has on each one. Many times, people who become victims of mass incarceration are also those in poverty. The studies made proved that incarceration does increase poverty and during that period incarceration was the prime reason for poverty.
This is relevant to my source because it includes repercussions to incarceration. It proves that putting individuals behind bars can not only affect them, but also their families. It contributes to my research paper because it conducts studies in a specific era where mass incarceration was at its highest, the 1980’s. The aim of this source was to prove that if mass incarceration would not have taken place in the U.S, poverty would have considerably decreased. One thing I also think this proves is how all those individuals living in poverty have a very high chance of being incarcerate due to poor resources.

Garland, D. (2001). Mass imprisonment: social causes and consequences. London: Sage.

This book includes papers by criminologists, sociologists, and students of history, and their thoughts about the political reasons for the marvel of mass incarceration. Mass incarceration includes the segregation of many poor people and minorities. Incarceration has turned into an institution for the social control of the poor. Different nations are currently looking to the USA to perceive what is ought to be gained from this huge and questionable social analysis. This book portrays mass imprisonment′s affect on crime, upon the minority groups most targeted, upon social strategy and, all the more upon national culture.
This is relevant to my source because it gives me insight on what people who study crime and people who study human interaction think about the clear issue of incarceration. It contributes to my research paper because it focuses on minorities, the people I know are suffering the most with this issue. The aim of this source is to inform others of a recurring pattern regarding minorities and the control it has over them. This source will be more helpful than the previous one because it focuses on more ways that mass incarceration affects minorities, aside from poverty.

Jakubiec, David; Kilcer, Andrew; and Sager, William, " The War on drugs" (2009). RIT: College of Liberal Arts 2009, Retrieved from http://scholarworks.rit.edu/article/1662

This article breaks down the issue of mass incarceration from the political point of view. It talks about the different laws presidents have passed regarding drugs and separates them into classes which makes it easier to understand. The War on Drugs was one of the prime reasons for mass incarceration and this article speaks about it. It also includes a small section about social control regarding African American’s and how many of the laws passed targeted them.
The source is somewhat relevant, but only when it mentions The War on Drugs. It contributes to my research paper by acting as background information on The War on Drugs. The aim of this source is to inform readers of different drug related laws, drug prevention administrations and briefly how minorities are affected by a number of these things. I will probably use this source the least because of its lack of information on minorities. It mentions lots about drugs, but not enough about mass incarceration.

Wald, J. and Losen, D. J. (2003), Defining and redirecting a school-to-prison pipeline. New Directions for Youth Development, 2003: 9–15. doi:10.1002/yd.51

The educational system in the U.S shares its inequalities just like the country itself does. Students who are most likely in schools with fewer resources are minorities. Because a large percentage of minorities are in low funded schools, they’re more likely to end up in detention center and prisons unlike their counterparts. The author is trying to reveal that minorities are overrepresented educationally when it comes to things such as suspensions, abandoning school, and low-test scores.
This is a relevant source because it shows one of the ways minorities fall right into prisons, school. It is an interesting topic because something that necessarily helps you, is sending many children to where they shouldn’t be going which is juvie or prison. This contributes to my research paper because it speaks on minorities and a factor which leads to mass incarceration. The aim of this source was to provide statistics on how different the school experience is for someone of color in a school with a limited amount of resources.