Mass incarceration in the United States is its own epidemic. The U.S. comprises only 5% of the world’s population but incarcerates a quarter of its prisoners — the highest rate of incarceration globally (Initiative, P.P). The U.S. currently incarcerates more than 2.3 million individuals, at 698 per 100,000 residents. State prisons house approximately 1.3 million, local jails 630,000, and federal prisons and jails 225,000.
Why does the U.S. imprison so many people? The official justification is to lower the crime rate, but there is no evidence of increasing incarceration reducing crime. According to data presented by the Prison Policy Initiative, the U.S. prison rate began to skyrocket in 1975. Crime rates, however, did not fall for nearly another 25 years. The crime index rate rose steadily from 1976 to 1992. There was a decline in violent offenses starting in 1993 — corresponding to a drop in unemployment and a decrease in the percentage of males categorized as high-risk in the “high-risk” in the 15- to 24-year-old age group (Prison Policy Initiative).
Since we cannot easily conclude that increasing imprisonment reduces crime, why does the US incarcerate so many people? Let’s look at the political and economic context behind mass incarceration. Abolitionists argue prisons serve several functions like social control, opportunities for profit by prison industry corporations, and management of the poor and unemployed. By “warehousing” unemployed people, prisons offer a solution to the contradiction of unemployed workers in the wealthiest country in the world. In the wake of the financial crisis of the 1970s, significant technological advances sought to minimize labor costs, putting people out of work as jobs became mechanized. With the high-tech revolution and loss of manual labor, unemployment soared, as did mass incarceration. Crime rate trends are related to the ups and downs of the capitalist economy rather than how many people are behind bars (Gilmore, 2007).
Another theory argues mass incarceration is about social control. Particularly apparent in a moment of political unrest, we argue that the state continues to use prisons to control and intimidate the population, especially minorities and poor communities (Puryear, 2013). In prisons today, African Americans and Latinos represent 56% of the incarcerated population, despite comprising only 32% of the total U.S. population (NAACP, “Resources”).
These theories attempt to reconcile the fact that prisons do not address the issue of crime and indeed misconstrue crime with harm. This blog argues that addressing the root causes of crime starts by funding social programs and enabling easy access to healthcare, education, housing, and jobs, which would help close prisons. We believe prisons create harm. They are places of abuse and horrendous conditions and don’t address the root causes of crime. The collection of blog posts on this site illustrates systemic violence and the prison system’s devaluation of human life.
The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed this decades-old systemic violence. It is more apparent than ever that there must be an end to mass incarceration and an end to the U.S. prison system as we know it. We demand that prisoners be free!