Are Prisons Obsolete?

Are Prisons Obsolete?
Prisons were initially established to encourage decent societal behaviors by depriving individuals of their rights and freedom. However, with time, the initial ideology was occupied with greed and discrimination, making prison ineffective and outdated. The government and corporations saw an opportunity to capitalize on it while subjecting the minority community to discrimination. In addition, the media created stunning images of life behind bars making the general population believe they have an idea of life behind bars. Thus, some social activists pushed the agenda to abolish the prison system for better reforms.
According to Davis (2021), the prison population grew from 200,000 individuals in the 1960s to 2 million prisoners in 2003, with America occupying up to 20% of the world's prison population. Thus, the US government invested in a plan to expand prisons which Davis referred to as a plan to colonize the American landscape. However, Davis believed Americans would resist the expansion as she asserted that crime rates do not call for the rampant development of prisons. In addition, many people think they will never go to prison, thus with little to no attention from the public. Instead, the media capitalizes on the situation and create an image that makes the people think they know what is happening behind bars.
Further, prisons are highly associated with racism, such that abolishing one is abolishing the other. The minority group, especially black people, has always been on the receiving end of social injustices. Traditional prisons are compared to slave plantations, giving whites supremacy and advantage of color. According to Nellis (2021), black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons almost five times that of white Americans. This equates that the minority community serves the majority in state prisons. According to Davis, the justice system that is supposed to protect and provide safety to individuals is the same system that provides unfair judgment and discrimination. Thus, even though the prison is to enhance good behaviors, the state administrations took advantage to punish the minority community.
In addition, the prison industrial complex evolved into a corporate relationship between the state, corporations, and the media. They all capitalized on the rising cases of incarceration as society began to calculate and compensate labor with time spent. However, an increase in incarceration cases does not equate to a rise in crime but rather the ideology of racism and pursuit of profit (Davis, 2011). Thus, entities not related to the justice system are invested in seeing an increase in incarceration cases. For instance, researchers and scientists use prisons to conduct their studies, while states and corporations use prison systems to control the growing population of destabilized people. Thus, based on these factors, prison should be abolished and instead use a different approach that is fair, equ...