Teacher Tool Kit
Tool Kit for Educators
A series of law enforcement and sentencing policy changes of the “tough on crime” era resulted in dramatic growth in incarceration. Since the official beginning of the War on Drugs in the 1980s, the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses in the U.S. skyrocketed from 40,900 in 1980 to 452,964 in 2017. Today, there are more people behind bars for a drug offense than the number of people who were in prison or jail for any crime in 1980. The number of people sentenced to prison for property and violent crimes has also increased even during periods when crime rates have declined.
Below are some resources that we found to be helpful when creating this unit.
This short video provides an overview of mass incarceration and was used to develop the first lesson in this unit.
Excerpts from this engaging podcast are used in lesson three. There are many helpful resources on the In the Dark website including a map of the crime scene, and recent updates on the case.
College Behind Bars, a four-part documentary film series directed by award-winning filmmaker Lynn Novick, produced by Sarah Botstein, and executive produced by Ken Burns, tells the story of a small group of incarcerated men and women struggling to earn college degrees and turn their lives around in one of the most rigorous and effective prison education programs in the United States – the Bard Prison Initiative.
Why Innocent People Plead Guilty
Do you ever think of innocent people pleading guilty? Do you wonder the reasons why they commit a mistake which they have never done? Let us dive into this section and find out what is going on behind the increasing amount of incarcerations.
Information from The Sentencing Project
https://www.sentencingproject.org/criminal-justice-facts/
The World Prison Brief website provides information and data on prison systems around the world. https://www.prisonstudies.org/