The United States is currently ranked number one globally for incarceration rates per capita, with a rate of 665 prisoners per 100,000 individuals. These numbers may seem disconcerting; however, they’re by no means arbitrary. There are underlying sociological concepts that explain the driving force for this large wave of incarceration, specifically, as it pertains to drug crimes. This summer, I had the opportunity to collaborate with Professor Leonard and work towards completing the manuscript for her new book “Reframing Drug Crimes in the Age of Mass Incarceration.” The manuscript provides a deeper analysis into understanding how drug crimes are framed as well as how victims of drug crimes are criminalized, thus, highlighting the United State’s biased approach to criminalizing drug-related individuals. In the vanguard of current media, certain populations are heavily demonized–as evident by the mass incarceration of Black and Hispanic men, but it is the more harmful, systematic transgressions of pharmaceutical companies and their alarming role in the United States public health crises, that are largely ignored.

Although I assisted Professor Leonard with research for various chapters, my primary responsibility was to research and draft a chapter in the book entitled “The U.S Opioid Crisis.” This chapter examines the current opioid crisis in the U.S. and investigates how pharmaceutical companies, the medical community, the media, and public policy have contributed to the creation of the opioid crisis. This chapter also explores the role that race, class, and geography play into the construction of populations who are humanized for their opioid use, such as white middle-class individuals, and those who are demonized and ignored, like low-income communities of color. Ultimately, this chapter–and the book as a whole–is meant to provide readers with a critical perspective as to how we understand and criminalize drug-related crimes in the United States, as well as how we can work to better address these crimes.