Liberty and Justice for All?

With more than two million people behind bars, the United States has the world's largest prison population, a 500% increase over the last 40 years.  Changes in law and policy, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase. In fact, crime rates have decreased. The U.S. also has the second-highest rate of incarceration and that doesn't include the more than six million, or almost 3% of the voting population, who are disenfranchised due to past convictions, “felony disenfranchisement.”    Nor does it include over 23 million widely stigmatized people, the "vast underground army of released felons — adult men and women convicted of serious criminal offenses for which they have been punished with prison time or probation, and who now form part of the general population.

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Links:

Prison Policy Initiative

The Sentencing Project

Lawsuit reveals how tech companies profit off the prison-industrial complex

The end of American prison visits: jails end face-to-face contact – and families suffer