Mass Incarceration In Chicago

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This section seeks to examine the history and some effects of mass incarceration in Chicago. When looking at the data it is difficult to overlook the racial disparities. Take marijuana for example. Black and White use marijuana at similar rates. However, those end up being convicted for possession of marijuana in Chicago are mostly Black. 86% of those convicted of marijuana possession in Chicago are Black men (http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/chicago-marijuana-arrest-statistics/Content?oid=4198958). This may something to with the disproportionate amount of police stops done on Black people.

In a report released in March 2015 the ACLU of Illinois found that the Chicago police stopped more than 250,000 people in the summer of 2014. Black
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This was also the first juvenile court in the U.S. as well. This court was across the street from Hull House and was supported and advocated for by Jane Addams and others known as the child savers. (http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/682.html). It was the culmination of efforts by reformists to have adolescent offenders treated differently from adult offenders. This led to the recognition that adolescents are legally distinct from adults and should be treated as such. Hence the calling them delinquents instead of criminals. (https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/19434_Section_I.pdf). Before this time adolescents over the age of seven were tried as adults and detained in jails with adults.
This juvenile court became a model replicated by jurisdictions across the U.S. and around the world.

The purpose of the juvenile court was to rehabilitate the youth who entered and prevent them from becoming adult criminals. The juvenile courts were seen as an intervention meant to alter an adolescent’s trajectory of becoming a criminal. In their beginnings, the juvenile courts were not punitive (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/juvenile/stats/childadult.html).

However, some skeptics thought that poor immigrant families would be targeted force their children to assimilate. At the time the immigrants living on the Near West Side were Czech, German,
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Unless the conversation is about sexual assault: how women become enmeshed in the justice isn’t discussed.

Given how that juvenile court began pioneering the legal recognition of adolescence: it’s ironic the number of teenagers who tried as adults in criminal courts.

It is no secret who is most affected by mass incarceration. In Chicago, black and brown people living on the south and west sides are far more likely to be stopped and arrested by police than their white counterparts..
Besides being black those admitted to JTDC are far more likely to come from families and/or neighborhoods that are highly policed and cycle through the criminal justice system. This is exacerbated by school suspension and expulsion rates of Black and Latino students. This has become known as the school-to-prison pipeline. Black students are 75% more likely to be suspended or expelled compared to their white counterparts. This is cycle is continues because after returning from jail or prison finding a job and stable housing can be

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