My first Magazine Final Draft Multimodal Project 4 | Page 2

America has a mass incarceration epidemic on its hands. For a half-century, the United
States has experienced unsustainable growth in the number of people behind bars, housing far
more inmates than any other nation. The problem owes its roots to the conservatism of those in
positions of power successfully lobbying to enact restrictive laws and harsh punitive measures to
deter behavior that conflicted with their own set of moral principles. In protest to the permissive
1960’s, the American people elected Richard Nixon to lead the nation. Nixon wasted little time
before declaring war on crime, matter-of-factly asserting that putting people behind bars was the
solution. Nixon’s determined efforts to dissuade violent crime led to reforms that initiated Amer-
ica’s prison explosion. Prior to the 1970’s, narcotics rarely led to arrests. Legislation was radical-
ly altered to deter people from participating in the drug trade or even from using drugs recre-
ationally. In one generation, drugs went from a counterculture hobby to a primary cause for in-
carceration. What Nixon began, President Reagan continued in the 1980’s when he declared a
War on Drugs during his first term. The American criminal code was radically altered to allow
for significantly more severe penalties for drug charges. Controversially, a disproportionate
number of those being convicted were minorities, due to newly formed regulations making quan-
tity of affordable drugs such as crack cocaine a key element in determining the severity of the
crime. One of the strategies implemented by the American government as part of its drug cam-
paign was mandatory minimum sentences; utilized to systematically dole out like sentences for
crimes, thus reducing the autonomy of judges who formerly ruled on individual cases.