prison

A very large number of Americans are held in jails and prisons – some 762 out of every 100,000 residents. Although the United States has only five percent of the world’s population, it holds one quarter of all the world’s prisoners. However, the social burdens occasioned by so much imprisonment are not borne equally by all segments of the American population. According to recent estimates, one of every 15 black men is held in jail or state or federal prison, compared to one of every 106 white males. This racial disparity has a big impact on the life fortunes of white and black men – contributing to gaps in many domains, ranging from jobs and family life to health and mortality.

But the social reverberations of mass incarceration do not stop with the prisoners themselves. The consequences can be even greater for children, family members, and associates attached to those who are imprisoned. A burgeoning research literature suggests that having a family member sent to prison damages the mental and physical health of those left at home. The imprisonment of a family member means one less person to contribute to household support, increasing stress and making everyone less economically secure.The social reverberations of mass incarceration do not stop with the prisoners themselves.

Although researchers have documented these indirect social impacts from imprisonment, they have been unable before now to estimate how many adult women and men are connected to an inmate – and therefore, have not been able to specify the scope of negative consequences faced by people tied to America’s prisoners. Now, for the first time, data from the 2006 General Social Survey make it possible to estimate the reach and wider social impact of the U.S. prison system. We use this data and build on previous studies to explore the impact of imprisonment on the family members and associates of black and white prisoners. more...

To many liberal critics, America’s swollen prisons have grown like a rapacious weed—one entirely immune to efforts to hack it back. The growth of incarceration seems inexorable and irreversible, driven by a combination of cynical politics, racial inequalities, and lobbying by corporations, unions, and towns that profit from the prison business.

These self-reinforcing dynamics are very real, but they are not cause for despair. In fact, there is reason to hope that the political momentum is turning against our over-reliance on cuffs and cages. The U.S. prison population declined each year from 2009 through 2012, and the number of new inmates admitted to state and federal prisons has reached a 12-year low. States from Texas to New York have taken aggressive steps to curb their prison populations, and even the U.S. Congress is entertaining sweeping reforms. There is no more important force in this reversal of political fortunes than the willingness of conservatives to take a more critical look at our prison system. more...

The United States imprisons more of its people than any other nation – currently one out of every 31 Americans. Lots of prisoners naturally leads to a steady flow of people leaving prison. Each year more than 700,000 U.S. prisoners are released to their communities. These men and women often have little education and poor prospects for finding jobs or establishing stable homes – and to make things worse, their health often deteriorates right after they leave prison.

About four out of every five newly released people suffer from chronic medical, psychiatric or substance abuse problems – but only about one in five visits a physician outside of hospital emergency departments during the first year after release. Imprisoned patients are often released without adequate follow-up instructions, medications, or access to health insurance coverage. Many let problems fester until they end up in hospital emergency rooms – inflating costs in U.S. health care and forcing taxpayers or insured Americans to foot bills the ex-prisoners cannot pay. An obvious solution is to ensure continuous good health care for people leaving prison. more...

Prison releases are at an all-time high in the United States, and many of those leaving prison are looking for jobs just as the country is recovering from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. What to do? Some on the left call for public job creation programs, while voices on the right suggest mandatory work programs for parolees and men with unpaid child support. Beyond the usual partisan divides, work remains an appealing possibility for reducing social ills such as repeat crimes and drug use.

But do job creation programs work? Past projects have sometimes been labeled failures because they did not magically catapult poor people with problematic histories into sobriety and middle-class success. That is an unrealistic expectation, but perhaps jobs programs can make some measurable difference, such as lowering crime. more...

The United States is sending more and more people to prison—at an extraordinary rate compared to other western countries and our own past. U.S. incarceration rates have risen dramatically, from the imprisonment of about one hundred of every 100,000 Americans in 1970, to the imprisonment of more than 500 out of every 100,000 people in 2010.

So what? Haven’t most prisoners committed destructive crimes? Many have, of course, yet increases in imprisonment are no longer simply tracking crime rates. During the late 1970s and 1980s, incarceration rates did rise roughly in parallel to increases in crime. But crime rates have declined since 1990, while rates of incarceration have continued their upward march.

When observers express concern about “mass incarceration” or the contemporary U.S. “prison boom,” they are thinking not only of the fast-rising rates of imprisonment disconnected from crime rates. They are also worried about the disproportionate impact on racial minorities and the most economically disadvantaged Americans. Remarkably, for black men with low levels of education, going to prison is a more typical life event than attending college or entering the military. more...