mass incarceration

With over 2.3 million Americans jailed or imprisoned 1, “the land of the free” has more of its citizens explicitly un-free (in absolute numbers and per capita) than any place else on Earth, now or at any point in history—what should we make of that? Is this Justice?

Additionally, while the constitution guarantees citizens the right to a trial, that right has been eroded to practically nothing, with only 3% of criminal cases resulting in a trial. In the other 97%, the vast majority of defendants are pressured to plead guilty, whether because they can’t afford a lawyer, the overworked and underfunded public defender’s office doesn’t have time for them, or sentence inflation resulting from minimum sentencing laws (an outcome of the War on Drugs) makes the risk of going to trial unbearable.

A factor perpetuating these policies is that those most negatively affected—the incarcerated—lose their right to vote in 48 states if convicted of a felony, and in 9 they never get it back even after serving their sentence for some crimes.

Like the War on Drugs to which it’s related, the data show that mass incarceration has had a negligible effect on crime rates, its only ostensible justification. So why does mass incarceration continue? the purpose of a system is what it does, so we should look and what effect mass incarceration actually has.

Sources

An old friend Matt Korostoff created an impactful visualization of the stats and scope of mass incarceration, including thoroughly-documented sources for the research.

1. ↩

   From the Prison Policy Initiative