:''This article focuses on the incarceration rate. For a discussion of incarcerations in general, see
Incarceration in the United States
Incarceration in the United States is a primary form of punishment and rehabilitation for the commission of felony and other offenses. The United States has the largest prison population in the world, and the highest per-capita incarceratio ...
.''
the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world at 716 per 100,000 of the national population; by 2019 it had fallen to 419 in state and federal prisons per 100,000. Between 2019 and 2020, the United States saw a significant drop in the total number of incarcerations. State and federal prison and local jail incarcerations dropped by 14% from 2.1 million in 2019 to 1.8 million in mid-2020. While the United States represents about 4.2 percent of the world's population, it houses around 20 percent of the world's prisoners. Corrections (which includes prisons, jails, probation, and parole) cost around $74 billion in 2007 according to the
U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) of the U.S. Department of Justice is the principal federal agency responsible for measuring crime, criminal victimization, criminal offenders, victims of crime, correlates of crime, and the operation of cri ...
U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) of the U.S. Department of Justice is the principal federal agency responsible for measuring crime, criminal victimization, criminal offenders, victims of crime, correlates of crime, and the operation of cri ...
(BJS). Retrieved 1 Jan 2012 by the
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) of the U.S. Department of Justice is the principal federal agency responsible for measuring crime, criminal victimization, criminal offenders, victims of crime, correlates of crime, and the operation of cri ...
(BJS). By Tracey Kyckelhahn, Ph.D., BJS statistician. See table 2 of th PDF "Total justice expenditures, by justice function, FY 1982–2007 (real dollars)". A total of around $74 billion for corrections in 2007. According to the ''Justice Expenditures and Employment in the United States, 2017'' report release by BJS, it's estimated that county and municipal governments spent roughly US$30 billion on corrections in 2017.
As of their March 2020 publication, the
Prison Policy Initiative
The Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) is a criminal justice oriented American public policy think tank based in Easthampton, Massachusetts. It is a non-profit organization, designated 501(c)(3) by the IRS.
It is the "leading public critic" of th ...
, a non-profit organization for decarceration, estimated that in the United States, about 2.3 million people were or are currently incarcerated. Of those who were incarcerated, 1,291,000 people were in state prison, 631,000 in local jails, 226,000 in federal prisons, 44,000 in youth correctional facilities, 42,000 in immigration detention camps, 22,000 in involuntary commitment, 11,000 in territorial prisons, 2,500 in Indian Country jails, and 1,300 in United States military prisons.
U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) of the U.S. Department of Justice is the principal federal agency responsible for measuring crime, criminal victimization, criminal offenders, victims of crime, correlates of crime, and the operation of cri ...
(BJS). By Lauren E. Glaze and Danielle Kaeble, BJS statisticians. See appendix table 5 on page 13 in th PDF for "Estimated number of persons supervised by adult correctional systems, by correctional status, 2000–2013." If all prisoners are counted (including those juvenile, territorial,
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE's stated mission is to protect the United States from the cross-border crime and illegal immigration tha ...
(ICE) (
immigration detention
Immigration detention is the policy of holding individuals suspected of visa violations, illegal entry or unauthorized arrival, as well as those subject to deportation and removal until a decision is made by immigration authorities to grant a vi ...
), Indian country, and military), then in 2008 the United States had around 24.7% of the world's 9.8 million prisoners. Prisoners in 2008 .'' (NCJ 228417). December 2009 report from the
U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) of the U.S. Department of Justice is the principal federal agency responsible for measuring crime, criminal victimization, criminal offenders, victims of crime, correlates of crime, and the operation of cri ...
. By William J. Sabol, Ph.D. and Heather C. West, Ph.D., BJS Statisticians. Also, Matthew Cooper, BJS Intern. Table 9 on page 8 of th PDF file has the number of inmates in state or federal prison facilities, local jails, U.S. territories, military facilities, ICE owned and contracted facilities, jails in Indian country, and juvenile facilities (2006 Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement). Table 8 on page 8 has the incarceration rates for 2000, 2007, and 2008.Sickmund, M., Sladky, T.J., Kang, W., & Puzzanchera, C Easy Access to the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement Click "National Crosstabs" at the top, and then choose the census years. Click "Show table" to get the total number of juvenile inmates for those years. Or go ' here '' for all the years.
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is an office of the United States Department of Justice and a component of the Office of Justice Programs. The OJJDP publishes the JRFC Databook on even numbered years for informati ...
International Centre for Prison Studies
The World Prison Brief at PrisonStudies.org is an online database providing free access to information on prison systems around the world. It is now hosted by the Institute For Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR), Birkbeck College, University of ...
. Se this page for breakdowns by region, whole world, prison population total, prison population rate, percentage of pre-trial detainees / remand prisoners, percentage of female prisoners, percentage of foreign prisoners, and occupancy rate. As of December 31, 2010, the
International Centre for Prison Studies
The World Prison Brief at PrisonStudies.org is an online database providing free access to information on prison systems around the world. It is now hosted by the Institute For Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR), Birkbeck College, University of ...
(ICPS) at
King's College London
King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's ...
estimated 2,266,832 prisoners from a total population of 310.64 million as of this date (730 per 100,000 in 2010).
This number comprises local jails with a nominal capacity of 866,782 inmates occupied at 86.4% (June 6, 2010), state prisons with a nominal capacity of approximately 1,140,500 occupied at approximately 115% (December 31, 2010), and federal prisons with a nominal capacity of 126,863 occupied at 136.0% (December 31, 2010). Of this number, 21.5% are
pretrial detainee
Remand, also known as pre-trial detention, preventive detention, or provisional detention, is the process of detaining a person until their trial after they have been arrested and charged with an offence. A person who is on remand is held i ...
s (December 31, 2010), 8.7% are female prisoners (December 31, 2010), 0.4% are juveniles (June 6, 2009), and 5.9% are foreign prisoners (June 30, 2007).
The imprisonment rate varies widely by state; Louisiana surpasses this by about 100%, but Maine incarcerates at about a fifth this rate. A report released 28 February 2008, indicates that more than 1 in 100 adults in the United States are in prison.
According to a
U.S. Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...
report published in 2006, over 7.2 million people were at that time in
prison
A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, correc ...
, on
probation
Probation in criminal law is a period of supervision over an offender, ordered by the court often in lieu of incarceration.
In some jurisdictions, the term ''probation'' applies only to community sentences (alternatives to incarceration), such ...
, or on
parole
Parole (also known as provisional release or supervised release) is a form of early release of a prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by certain behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated parole officers, or ...
(released from prison with restrictions). That means roughly 1 in every 32 adult Americans are under some sort of
criminal justice system
Criminal justice is the delivery of justice to those who have been accused of committing crimes. The criminal justice system is a series of government agencies and institutions. Goals include the rehabilitation of offenders, preventing other ...
control.
Growth
In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the incarceration rate in the US increased by a factor of five. Between the years 2001 and 2012, crime rates (both property and violent crimes) have declined 22% after already falling 30% in years prior between 1991 and 2001. In 2012, 710 out of every 100,000 U.S. residents were imprisoned in either local jails, state prisons, federal prisons, and privately operated facilities.; close to a quarter of the global prison population.
The
Bureau of Justice Statistics
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) of the U.S. Department of Justice is the principal federal agency responsible for measuring crime, criminal victimization, criminal offenders, victims of crime, correlates of crime, and the operation of crim ...
has released a study which finds that, despite the total number of prisoners incarcerated for drug-related offenses increasing by 57,000 between 1997 and 2004, the proportion of drug offenders to total prisoners in State prison populations stayed steady at 21%. The percentage of Federal prisoners serving time for drug offenses declined from 63% in 1997 to 55% in that same period. In the twenty-five years since the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, the United States penal population rose from around 300,000 to more than two million. Between 1986 and 1991, African-American women's incarceration in state prisons for drug offenses increased by 828 percent.
In 2009, the
U.S. Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...
announced that the growth rate of the state prison population had fallen to its lowest since 2006, but it still had a 0.2% growth-rate compared to the total U.S. prison population. The
California state prison system
The California State Prison System is a system of prisons, fire camps, contract beds, reentry programs, and other special programs administered by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) Division of Adult Institutions t ...
population fell in 2009, the first year that populations had fallen in 38 years.
When looking at specific populations within the criminal justice system the growth rates are vastly different. In 1977, there were just slightly more than eleven thousand incarcerated women. By 2004, the number of women under state or federal prison had increased by 757 percent, to more than 111,000, and the percentage of women in prison has increased every year, at roughly double the rate of men, since 2000. The rate of incarcerated women has expanded at about 4.6% annually between 1995 and 2005 with women now accounting for 7% of the population in state and federal prisons.
Comparison with other countries
Comparing some countries with similar percentages of immigrants,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
has an incarceration rate of 76 per 100,000 population (as of 2014),Germany
International Centre for Prison Studies
The World Prison Brief at PrisonStudies.org is an online database providing free access to information on prison systems around the world. It is now hosted by the Institute For Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR), Birkbeck College, University of ...
.
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
International Centre for Prison Studies
The World Prison Brief at PrisonStudies.org is an online database providing free access to information on prison systems around the world. It is now hosted by the Institute For Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR), Birkbeck College, University of ...
. and
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...
International Centre for Prison Studies
The World Prison Brief at PrisonStudies.org is an online database providing free access to information on prison systems around the world. It is now hosted by the Institute For Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR), Birkbeck College, University of ...
. Comparing other countries with a
zero tolerance
A zero tolerance policy is one which imposes a punishment for every infraction of a stated rule.zero tolerance, n.' (under ''zero, n.''). The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Ed. 1989. Retrieved 10 November 2009. Italy, Japan, Singapore China, Indi ...
policy for illegal drugs, the rate of
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
International Centre for Prison Studies
The World Prison Brief at PrisonStudies.org is an online database providing free access to information on prison systems around the world. It is now hosted by the Institute For Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR), Birkbeck College, University of ...
.
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...
International Centre for Prison Studies
The World Prison Brief at PrisonStudies.org is an online database providing free access to information on prison systems around the world. It is now hosted by the Institute For Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR), Birkbeck College, University of ...
.
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
International Centre for Prison Studies
The World Prison Brief at PrisonStudies.org is an online database providing free access to information on prison systems around the world. It is now hosted by the Institute For Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR), Birkbeck College, University of ...
. and
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
International Centre for Prison Studies
The World Prison Brief at PrisonStudies.org is an online database providing free access to information on prison systems around the world. It is now hosted by the Institute For Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR), Birkbeck College, University of ...
.
Causes
A 2014 report by the
National Research Council National Research Council may refer to:
* National Research Council (Canada), sponsoring research and development
* National Research Council (Italy), scientific and technological research, Rome
* National Research Council (United States), part of ...
identified two main causes of the increase in the United States' incarceration rate over the previous 40 years: longer prison sentences and increases in the likelihood of imprisonment. The same report found that longer prison sentences were the main driver of increasing incarceration rates since 1990.
Increased sentencing laws
Even though there are other countries that commit more inmates to prison annually, the fact that the United States keeps their prisoners longer causes the total rate to become higher. To give an example, the average burglary sentence in the United States is 16 months, compared to 5 months in
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
and 7 months in England.
Looking at reasons for imprisonment will further clarify why the incarceration rate and length of sentences are so high. The practice of imposing longer prison sentences on repeat offenders is common in many countries but the
three-strikes law
In the United States, habitual offender laws (commonly referred to as three-strikes laws) have been implemented since at least 1952, and are part of the United States Justice Department's Anti-Violence Strategy. These laws require a person who ...
s in the U.S. with mandatory 25 year imprisonment — implemented in many states in the 1990s — are statutes enacted by state governments in the United States which mandate state courts to impose harsher sentences on habitual offenders who are previously convicted of two prior serious criminal offenses and then commit a third.
The
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, commonly referred to as the 1994 Crime Bill, the Clinton Crime Bill, or the Biden Crime Law, is an Act of Congress dealing with crime and law enforcement; it became law in 1994. It is t ...
of 1994 may have had a minor effect on mass incarceration.
Economic and age contributions
Crime rates in low-income areas are much higher than in middle to high class areas. As a result, Incarceration rates in low-income areas are much higher than in wealthier areas due to these high crime rates. When the incarcerated or criminal is a youth, there is a significant impact on the individual and rippling effects on entire communities. Social capital is lost when an individual is incarcerated. How much social capital is lost is hard to accurately estimate, however Aizer and Doyle found a strong positive correlation between lower income as an adult if an individual is incarcerated in their youth in comparison to those who are not incarcerated. 63 percent to 66 percent of those involved in crimes are under the age of thirty. People incarcerated at a younger age lose the capability to invest in themselves and in their communities. Their children and families become susceptible to financial burden preventing them from escaping low-income communities. This contributes to the recurring
cycle of poverty
In economics, a cycle of poverty or poverty trap is caused by self-reinforcing mechanisms that cause poverty, once it exists, to persist unless there is outside intervention. It can persist across generations, and when applied to developing count ...
that is positively correlated with incarceration. Poverty rates have not been curbed despite steady economic growth. Poverty is not the sole dependent variable for increasing incarceration rates. Incarceration leads to more incarceration by putting families and communities at a dynamic social disadvantage.
Drug sentencing laws
The "
War on Drugs
The war on drugs is a global campaign, led by the United States federal government, of drug prohibition, military aid, and military intervention, with the aim of reducing the illegal drug trade in the United States.Cockburn and St. Clair, 1 ...
" is a policy that was initiated by
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
with the
Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970
The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, , is a United States federal law that, with subsequent modifications, requires the pharmaceutical industry to maintain physical security and strict record keeping for certain typ ...
and vigorously pursued by
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
. By 2010, drug offenders in federal prison had increased to 500,000 per year, up from 41,000 in 1985. According to
Michelle Alexander
Michelle Alexander (born October 7, 1967) is an American writer and civil rights activist. She is best known for her 2010 book '' The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness''. Since 2018, she has been an opinion columnist ...
, drug related charges accounted for more than half the rise in state prisoners between 1985 and 2000. 31 million people have been arrested on drug related charges, approximately 1 in 10 Americans. In contrast, John Pfaff of
Fordham Law School
Fordham University School of Law is the law school of Fordham University. The school is located in Manhattan in New York City, and is one of eight ABA-approved law schools in that city. In 2013, 91% of the law school's first-time test tak ...
has accused Alexander of exaggerating the influence of the War on Drugs on the rise in the United States' incarceration rate: according to him, the percent of state prisoners whose primary offense was drug-related peaked at 22% in 1990. The Brookings Institution reconciles the differences between Alexander and Pfaff by explaining two ways to look at the prison population as it relates to drug crimes, concluding "The picture is clear: Drug crimes have been the predominant reason for new admissions into state and federal prisons in recent decades" and "rolling back the war on drugs would not, as Pfaff and Urban Institute scholars maintain, totally solve the problem of mass incarceration, but it could help a great deal, by reducing exposure to prison."
As of December 2017, only 14.4% of state prisoners were serving sentences for a drug offenses with 3.7% of serving for possession and 10.8% serving for trafficking, other drug offenses, and unspecified drug offenses. Time served for drug related offenses are also amongst the shortest with prisoners released in 2016 having served an average sentence length 22 months while the median time served only 14 months.
After the passage of Reagan's Anti-Drug Abuse Act in 1986, incarceration for non-violent offenses dramatically increased. The Act imposed the same five-year
mandatory sentence
Mandatory sentencing requires that offenders serve a predefined term for certain crimes, commonly serious and violent offenses. Judges are bound by law; these sentences are produced through the legislature, not the judicial system. They are inst ...
on those with convictions involving crack as on those possessing 100 times as much powder cocaine. This had a disproportionate effect on low-level street dealers and users of crack, who were more commonly poor blacks, Latinos, the young, and women.
Courts were given more discretion in sentencing by the '' Kimbrough v. United States'' (2007) decision, and the disparity was decreased to 18:1 by the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010."Fair Sentencing Act of 2010" , Families Against Mandatory Minimums, famm.org. Retrieved September 30, 2010.
By 2003, 58% of all women in federal prison were convicted of drug offenses. Black and Hispanic women in particular have been disproportionately affected by the War on Drugs. Since 1986, incarceration rates have risen by 400% for women of all races, while rates for Black women have risen by 800%. Formerly incarcerated Black women are also most negatively impacted by the collateral legal consequences of conviction.
According to the
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
, "Even when women have minimal or no involvement in the drug trade, they are increasingly caught in the ever-widening net cast by current drug laws, through provisions of the criminal law such as those involving
conspiracy
A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement between persons (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder or treason, especially with political motivation, while keeping their agree ...
constructive possession
Constructive possession is a legal fiction to describe a situation in which an individual has actual control over chattels or real property without actually having physical control of the same assets. At law, a person with constructive possessi ...
that expand
criminal liability
In law, liable means "responsible or answerable in law; legally obligated". Legal liability concerns both civil law and criminal law and can arise from various areas of law, such as contracts, torts, taxes, or fines given by government agenci ...
to reach partners, relatives and bystanders."
These new policies also disproportionately affect African-American women. According to Dorothy E. Roberts, the explanation is that poor women, who are disproportionately black, are more likely to be placed under constant supervision by the State in order to receive social services. They are then more likely to be caught by officials who are instructed to look specifically for drug offenses. Roberts argues that the criminal justice system's creation of new crimes has a direct effect on the number of women, especially black women, who then become incarcerated.
Racialization
One of the first laws in the U.S. against drugs was the Opium Exclusion Act of 1909. It prohibited the smoking of opium, which was ingested but not smoked by a substantial portion of Caucasian housewives in America. It was smoked mainly by Asian American immigrants coming to build the railroads. These immigrants were targeted with anti-Asian sentiment, as many voters believed they were losing jobs to Asian immigrants.
Disproportional incarceration of black people
Currently, the U.S. is at its highest rate of imprisonment in history, with young Black men experiencing the highest levels of incarceration. One out of every 15 people imprisoned across the world is a Black American incarcerated in the United States. A 2004 study reported that the majority of people sentenced to prison in the United States are Black, and almost one-third of Black men in their twenties are either on parole, on probation, or in prison. These disproportionate levels of imprisonment have made incarceration a normalized occurrence for
African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...
communities. This has caused a distrust from Black individuals towards aspects of the legal system such as police, courts, and heavy sentences. In 2011, more than 580,000 Black men and women were in state or federal prison. Black men and women are imprisoned at higher rates compared to all other age groups, with the highest rate being Black men aged 25 to 39. In 2001, almost 17% of Black men had previously been imprisoned in comparison to 2.6% of White men. By the end of 2002, of the two million inmates of the U.S. incarceration system, Black men surpassed the number of White men (586,700 to 436,800 respectively of inmates with sentences more than one year). In the same year, there were also more Black women behind bars than White women (36,000 to 35,400). African-Americans are about eight times more likely to be imprisoned than Whites. The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization, released in 1990 that almost one in four Black men in the U.S. between the ages of 20 and 29 were under some degree of control by the criminal justice system. In 1995, the organization announced that the rate had increased to one in three. In the same year, the non-profit stated that more than half of young Black men were then under criminal supervision in both D.C. and
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
. In addition, African-American women are the largest growing incarcerated population.
The War on Drugs plays a role in the disproportionate amount of incarcerated African-Americans. Despite a general decline in crime, the massive increase in new inmates due to drug offenses ensured historically high incarceration rates during the 1990s and beyond, with
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
serving as an example. Drug-related arrests continued to increase in the city despite a near 50% drop in felony crimes. While White individuals have a higher rate of drug use, 60% of people imprisoned for drug charges in 1998 were Black. Drug crimes constituted 27% of the increase in the number of Black state prisoners in the 1990s, while Whites experienced a 14% increase. The rise in African-American imprisonment as a result of newer drug crimes has been justified for its alleged societal benefits. Law officials and advocates of these policies argue that targeting underserved, primarily inner-city neighborhoods is appropriate because these areas see the more harmful and violent effects of drug use. These same individuals further point to the negative effects drug distribution has on these areas to support the inequity in how crimes involving, for example, powdered cocaine can be treated with less severity than crack cocaine. This ideology results in a greater number of arrests of poor, inner-city Black individuals.
A significant contributing factor to these figures are the racially and economically segregated neighborhoods that account for the majority of the Black prison population. These neighborhoods are normally impoverished and possess a high minority population. For example, as many as one in eight adult males who inhabit these urban areas is sent to prison each year, and one in four of these men is in prison on any given day. A 1992 study revealed that 72% of all New York State's prisoners came from only 7 of New York City's 55 community districts. Many recently released individuals return to the area they lived in prior to incarceration. Also in New York City, rates of incarceration stayed the same or grew in 1996 in neighborhoods that had the highest rates in 1990. Additionally, in these same neighborhoods, there was a stronger police presence and parole surveillance despite a period of a general decline in crime.
Finding employment post-release is a significant struggle for African-Americans. American sociologist Devah Pager performed a study to prove this. She assembled pairs of fake job seekers to find jobs with résumés that portrayed the applicant had a criminal record. The findings indicated that the presence of a criminal record reduced callbacks by approximately 50%. This was more common for African-Americans than for Whites.
Prison privatization
In the 1980s, the rising number of people incarcerated as a result of the War on Drugs and the wave of privatization that occurred under the
Reagan Administration
Ronald Reagan's tenure as the 40th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1981, and ended on January 20, 1989. Reagan, a Republican from California, took office following a landslide victory over D ...
saw the emergence of the for-profit prison industry. Although modern
private prison
A private prison, or for-profit prison, is a place where people are imprisoned by a third party that is contracted by a government agency. Private prison companies typically enter into contractual agreements with governments that commit pr ...
s did not exist in the US prior to the 1980s, the concept of private prisons can be found within the United States as early as the 1800s. In 1844, Louisiana privatized its penitentiary when it allowed a private company to run the facility as a factory where prisoners were used to manufacture clothing.
In a 2011 report by the ACLU, it is claimed that the rise of the for-profit prison industry is a "major contributor" to "
mass incarceration
Incarceration in the United States is a primary form of punishment and rehabilitation for the commission of felony and other offenses. The United States has the largest prison population in the world, and the highest per-capita incarceratio ...
," along with bloated state budgets. Louisiana, for example, has the highest rate of incarceration in the world with the majority of its prisoners being housed in privatized, for-profit facilities. Such institutions could face bankruptcy without a steady influx of prisoners. A 2013 Bloomberg report states that in the past decade the number of inmates in for-profit prisons throughout the U.S. rose 44 percent.
Corporations who operate prisons, such as
CoreCivic
CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), is a company that owns and manages private prisons and detention centers and operates others on a concession basis. Co-founded in 1983 in Nashville, Tennessee by Thomas W. Beasle ...
(formerly the Corrections Corporation of America) and The
GEO Group
The GEO Group, Inc. (GEO) is a publicly traded C corporation that invests in private prisons and mental health facilities in North America, Australia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, the company's f ...
, spend significant amounts of money lobbying the federal government along with state governments. The two aforementioned companies, the largest in the industry, have been contributors to the
American Legislative Exchange Council
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a nonprofit organization of conservative state legislators and private sector representatives who draft and share model legislation for distribution among state governments in the United State ...
(ALEC), which seeks to expand the privatization of corrections and lobbies for policies that would increase incarceration, such as three-strike laws and "truth-in-sentencing" legislation.Sullivan, Laura (2010) Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law ''
National Public Radio
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...
''. Prison companies also sign contracts with states that guarantee at least 90 percent of prison beds be filled. If these "lockup quotas" aren't met, the state must reimburse the prison company for the unused beds. Prison companies use the profits to expand and put pressure on lawmakers to incarcerate a certain number of people. This influence on the government by the private prison industry has been referred to as the
Prison–industrial complex
The prison-industrial complex (PIC) is a term, coined after the " military-industrial complex" of the 1950s, used by scholars and activists to describe the relationship between a government and the various businesses that benefit from institutio ...
.
The industry is well aware of what reduced crime rates could mean to their bottom line. This from the CCA's SEC report in 2010:
Our growth … depends on a number of factors we cannot control, including crime rates … ductions in crime rates … could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities.
In January 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order directing the
Department of Justice
A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a v ...
(DOJ) to begin phasing out its contracts with private federal prisons.
As of March 2021, the private prison population of the United States has seen a 16% decline since reaching its peak in 2012 with 137,000 people incarcerated. According to a March 2021 report released by
The Sentencing Project
The Sentencing Project is a Washington, D.C.-based research and advocacy center working for decarceration in the United States and seeking to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system. The organization produces nonpartisan repor ...
, 115,428 people were incarcerated in private prisons in the US, representing 8% of the total state and federal prison population.
Editorial policies of major media
Gallup polling since 1989 has found that in most years in which there was a decline in the U.S. crime rate, a majority of Americans said that violent crime was getting worse.
A substantial body of research claims that incarceration rates are primarily a function of media editorial policies, largely unrelated to the actual crime rate. ''Constructing Crime: Perspectives on Making News and Social Problems'' is a book collecting together papers on this theme. The researchers say that the jump in incarceration rate from 0.1% to 0.5% of the United States population from 1975 to 2000 (documented in the figure above) was driven by changes in the editorial policies of the mainstream commercial media and is unrelated to any actual changes in crime.
Media consolidation
Concentration of media ownership (also known as media consolidation or media convergence) is a process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media. Contemporary research demonstrates in ...
reduced competition on content. That allowed media company executives to maintain substantially the same audience while slashing budgets for investigative journalism and filling the space from the police blotter, which tended to increase and stabilize advertising revenue. It is safer, easier and cheaper to write about crimes committed by poor people than the wealthy. Poor people can be libeled with impunity, but major advertisers can materially impact the profitability of a commercial media organization by reducing their purchases of advertising space with that organization.
News media thrive on feeding frenzies (such as missing white women) because they tend to reduce production costs while simultaneously building an audience interested in the latest development in a particular story. It takes a long time for a reporter to learn enough to write intelligently about a specific issue. Once a reporter has achieved that level of knowledge, it is easier to write subsequent stories. However, major advertisers have been known to spend their advertising budgets through different channels when they dislike the editorial policies. Therefore, a media feeding frenzy focusing on an issue of concern to an advertiser may reduce revenue and profits.McChesney (2004, p. 81) wrote, "A five-year study of investigative journalism on TV news completed in 2002 determined that investigative journalism has all but disappeared from the nation's commercial airwaves."
Sacco described how "competing news organizations responded to each other's coverage
hile
Hile ( ne, हिले) is a hill town located in the Eastern Part of Nepal, 13 km north of the regional center of Dhankuta Bazar. At an elevation of 1948 meters, it is the main route to other hilly districts like Bhojpur and Sankhuwasab ...
the police, in their role as gatekeepers of crime news, reacted to the increased media interest by making available more stories that reflected and reinforced" a particular theme. " e dynamics of competitive journalism created a media feeding frenzy that found news workers 'snatching at shocking numbers' and 'smothering reports of stable or decreasing use under more ominous headlines.'"
The reasons cited above for increased incarcerations (US racial demographics, Increased sentencing laws, and Drug sentencing laws) have been described as consequences of the shift in editorial policies of the mainstream media.
Additionally, media coverage has been proven to have a profound impact on criminal sentencing. Beale found that the more media attention a criminal case is given, the greater the incentive for prosecutors and judges to pursue harsher sentences. This is directly linked to the enormous increase in media coverage of crime over the past two decades. While crime decreased by 8% between 1992 and 2002, news reports on crime increased by 800% and the average prison sentence length increased by 2,000% for all crimes. Less media coverage means a greater chance of a lighter sentence or that the defendant may avoid prison time entirely.
Citizenship statistics
Inmate citizenship statistics, which are updated monthly by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, lists the following statistics for July 2021: 83.67% of Federal inmates are U.S. citizens; 9.3% are citizens of Mexico, and the next three countries—Colombia, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic, contribute less than 1% each; 4.9% have other or unknown citizenship. The Bureau did not state how many had come to the U.S. legally.
See also
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Comparison of United States incarceration rate with other countries
In 2016, the United States had the highest prison and jail population (2,121,600 in adult facilities in 2016), and the highest incarceration rate in the world (655 per 100,000 people in 2016).Felony disenfranchisement in the United States
Felony disenfranchisement in the United States is the suspension or withdrawal of voting rights due to the conviction of a criminal offense. The actual class of crimes that results in disenfranchisement vary between jurisdictions, but most commonly ...
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Incarceration in the United States
Incarceration in the United States is a primary form of punishment and rehabilitation for the commission of felony and other offenses. The United States has the largest prison population in the world, and the highest per-capita incarceratio ...
Mass incarceration
Incarceration in the United States is a primary form of punishment and rehabilitation for the commission of felony and other offenses. The United States has the largest prison population in the world, and the highest per-capita incarceratio ...
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Mentally ill people in United States jails and prisons
Mentally ill people are overrepresented in United States jail and prison populations relative to the general population. There are three times more seriously mentally ill persons in jails and prisons than in hospitals in the United States. Scholar ...
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Prison–industrial complex
The prison-industrial complex (PIC) is a term, coined after the " military-industrial complex" of the 1950s, used by scholars and activists to describe the relationship between a government and the various businesses that benefit from institutio ...
Youth incarceration in the United States
The United States incarcerates more of its youth than any other country in the world through the juvenile courts and the adult criminal justice system, which reflects the larger trends in incarceration practices in the United States. In 2010, a ...
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Decarceration in the United States
Decarceration in the United States involves government policies and community campaigns aimed at reducing the number of people held in custody or custodial supervision. Decarceration, the opposite of incarceration, also entails reducing the rate ...
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large.
The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial su ...
Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retirem ...
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group is an independent publishing house founded in 1949. Under several imprints, the company offers scholarly books for the academic market, as well as trade books. The company also owns the book distributing compa ...
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* SpearIt, How Mass Incarceration Underdevelops Latino Communities (April 2, 2015). U.S. Latinos and Criminal Injustice (Michigan State University Press 2015). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2589112