A Nation Behind Bars
2,220,300 people. That is how many people are in prison in the United States. That is greater than the population of Trinidad and Tobago, who just beat us in soccer and advanced to the World Cup.
The numbers are staggering. The U.S. is 4.4 percent of the world population, yet holds 22 percent of the world’s prison population.
So stop and ask yourself now: are you really comfortable living in a country that throws people into prisons at a higher rate than any other country in the world?
It is very important to understand that this hasn’t always been the case. Mass incarceration in the United States is a recent phenomenon.
It’s easy to look at the above graph and equate mass incarceration to the War on Drugs, but the problem is more complicated than that. Approximately half (48.6 percent) of prisoners in federal prisons are in for drug-related offenses, but only 16 percent of prisoners in state prions are in for a drug “crime.” This seems significant, but research has concluded that even if the U.S. released all of its drug offenders it would still blow the rest of the world out of the water in terms of prison population.
So the problem with incarceration is more complex than drug policy, but that doesn’t mean that the government should continue to imprison nonviolent offenders for, in some cases, owning a plant.
The U.S. incarceration rate per 100,000 people can be put into better perspective when compared to other founding NATO countries:
So is there any upside to these graphs showing more and more people going into prison in the United States? Well, violent crime rates have been steadily declining, but there is no substantial evidence suggesting that the drop in crime can be attributed to mass incarceration. A study by the Atlantic stated “We do not know with precision what caused the crime decline, but the growth in incarceration played only a minor role, and now has a negligible impact.”
A comprehensive study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that you can lower incarceration and crime rates at the same time, as has been the case in 27 states in the last decade. New York in particular lowered incarceration by 26 percent and saw a 28 percent decrease in crime.
It is important to understand that this problem will not be fixed by federal action alone. President Barack Obama tried to tackle mass incarceration, and although he implemented some positive changes, especially for non-violent drug offenders, he could not fix the problem on the state level. Unfortunately, the state level is where most people are being incarcerated.
Mass incarceration does not simply affect the incarcerated, but extends into all of American soceity. One in eight poor children has an incarcerated parent, the same is true for one in nine black children, and one in 14 of all children. Children of incarcerated parents are in turn more likely to drop out of school and become incarcerated themselves. The pattern of incarceration is pernicious and cyclical.
Clearly, the U.S. needs to imprison fewer people and prioritize other factors that have contributed to lowering the crime rate, such as better policing tactics and increased economic opportunities. It would be naïve to state that incarceration in the U.S. has done nothing to reduce crime, but it has not done nearly enough to justify the fact that the United States is the most incarcerated nation on the planet.
