My name is Angie Canas, I am currently enrolled at Hartford Public High School Law & Government. This testimony was presented to the Committee on Criminal Justice Reform to express how mass incarceration affects the community around me. Mass incarceration affects many people, especially minority men. They are put in jail or prisons where the sentence is shorter and they are awaiting trial or for a minor crime. Where the sentence is longer due to a serious crime or state/national offense. The problem of putting people in prison began in the 1970s (Allison). In the 1970s there were around 200,000-300,000 people locked up (Maure&King). Since then we have 2.2 million people locked up, which is 8 times more than in the 1970s (Maure&King). The national race per 100,000 data is interesting to look at. The race with the fewest people locked up is 412 white men and compared to the highest is 2290 black men. This is a 1:9 ratio, meaning that for every white male locked up, 9 black men are also locked up. Among Hispanics, 742 of his compatriots are locked up and this is just the national figure. Looking at these numbers we see that the most blocked race are men of color. Looking at the CT data there are 2535 black men locked up and also 211 white men (Maure&King). This is an incredibly huge difference in the number of people incarcerated. Considering both races, black men are 12 times more likely to be locked up than white men. For Hispanics, this is 1 white male for every 6.6 Hispanic males locked up, as the number of people locked up for this race is 1401 (Maure&King). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Michelle Alexander and the film The 13th believe that mass incarceration is a new method of social control over minorities. Michelle Alexander suggests that we are facing the New Jim Crow, which is giving people the right to legally segregate themselves based on criminal status. Incarceration rates began to increase due to the war on drugs. The War on Drugs occurred when greater numbers of black males began to be arrested more often than other races. Because of supporting the war on drugs, we targeted the subcastes, the people who were born into them (Allison). This means that people born there, are born to be arrested and locked up later due to unequal privileges such as social class. (HE WASN'T HERE TO WATCH THE MOVIE). Now Stephanie Bibas disagrees with Michelle Alexander. He expresses how the New Jim Crow is not right, even though he admits that the highest incarceration rate in the world in the United States is only 1/20 of the world's population and 25% of the world's prisoners, or 5/20 (Bibas). American prisons were booming, and liberals argued that this was due to racism and the war on drugs, particularly the long sentences prisoners received for nonviolent drug crimes. He says Alexander is wrong about the accusations he received from people. Only ⅕ of the charges involved drugs (Bibas). So the prison boom is not due to drug arrests. 2/3 of the charges against prisoners are violent and property crimes. Most drug criminals have violent and property crimes. What made it harder to write the laws were the black Democrats because they were afraid that it wasn't just a white thing (Bibas). The war on drugs was bipartisan because black Democrats also participated in the enforcement of.