6,815,000.

That's roughly the number of people the Bureau of Justice reported to be under correctional supervision in the United States in 2014. Statistically, that number means that every 1 in 36 adults were under correctional surveillance. If those numbers don't alarm you, I don't know what will.

These figures didn't just happen overnight, they were especially on-the-rise ever since Richard Nixon was in office. The Nixon Administration placed a great deal of concern over the protection and enforcement of law and order. In 1971, Nixon addressed the nation and explained that drugs were an illicit threat to the security of the country and its people, thus coining the term "War on Drugs." This crackdown on drugs called for things like mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants, as well as the development of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

Later, the Reagan Administration reinforced Nixon's ideals and the War on Drugs tenfold. The emergence of crack cocaine caused this war to escalate even further and greatly contributed to the incarceration of many African-Americans and Latino-Americans. Together, President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan criminalized drugs on an extreme scale instead of treating it as a social issue and contributed to the mass incarceration culture of the United States that still exists today.

Moving into the 1990's, Bill Clinton's Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act essentially militarized the police and called for the building of more prisons to contain the overflow of inmates that happened as a result of the residual effects of Nixon and Reagan's War on Drugs and the VCLEA itself.

Many Americans who were received long, mandatory sentencing for often petty drug crimes because of this disastrous War on Drugs is the main cause of the exponential increase of the prison population. Not only that, but it appeared to particularly target minorities. Shows like COPS seemed selective in the footage they would show that portrayed these minorities as the main perpetrators of drugs and violent crimes. To add to this racial stereotyping, the term "superpredators" was directed at young African-Americans and used by First Lady of the time, Hillary Clinton.

Mass incarceration not only perpetuates the criminalization of drugs, it feeds into this country's deep seated racial issues and stereotypes.

The 13 Amendment also plays a major role in the mass incarceration of Americans. Many people know the 13th Amendment as the piece of legislation that emancipated the slaves under the Lincoln Administration in 1865, but many are unaware that there is a clause within the Amendment that still condones slavery by means of the due process of law. Section I of the 13th Amendment states that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction" (US Const. amend. XIII, sec I). Basically, the incorporation of this clause states that involuntary servitude is permissible if it's used as punishment for a crime, so inmates can be subjected to slave labor.

Today, many inmates are forced to partake in prison industrial labor, though it is often under the guise of career building. Companies like Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, Wendy's, Starbucks, Victoria's Secret, and Verizon use inmates to produce their products. Big corporations like the ones listed above, therefore, benefit from higher numbers of incarceration. As a result, many of these business empires belong to ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which influences lawmakers to pass or deny legislation that could potentially benefit or harm their profits.

Overall, slavery hasn't really been eradicated in the United States, only transformed.

Mass incarceration needs to be addressed as a major issue within this country by our political leaders and should have a place on all of their platform. But the first step to solving this national crisis is to get the money and greed of big corporations out of the correctional system. Once the monetary incentive is addressed and dissolved, only then can real progress be made towards reform.