Mass Incarceration Was Always Designed to Work This Way

As of 2019, the United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its prison population.

In 2019, 2.2 million people were locked in the country’s (adult) jails and prisons. If you add in people locked in juvenile detention, immigrant detention, and military prisons, that number rises to approximately 2.3 million people locked behind bars.

Then there are the people under correctional supervision, which means they’re under some form of surveillance and restriction either instead of or in addition to a jail or prison sentence. These forms of supervision include house arrest, electronic monitoring, parole, and probation. Individuals are not locked behind bars, but their movements are narrowly circumscribed and any violation of the myriad rules can result in jail or prison. If you count them, the total number of people under some form of correctional control rises to 6.7 million.

At least 4.9 million people cycle through the nation’s 3,163 jails each year. The majority of people in jail have not been convicted.

Some will spend a day or two in jail before being released either on bail, meaning that someone paid money for their release pending trial, or on their own recognizance, meaning that a judge allowed them to go home so long as they promise to return to court. Others remain in jail because they cannot afford to post bail.

How did we get to this point? Some might assume it’s because our criminal legal system is broken and in need of repair. But if we look at the history of prisons in the United States, we can see that the system of mass incarceration isn’t merely flawed or broken but is operating as it was designed: to sweep society’s problems (and people seen as problematic) behind gates and walls where few have to see them.

The modern-day prison is a relatively new phenomenon. Before 1773, people were typically jailed while awaiting judgment; their punishments were generally physical and vicious—floggings, time in the stocks, and executions. In the United States, imprisonment as punishment began with the opening of Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Jail in 1773.

by Victoria Law, LitHub |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. We should also discuss widespread privatization and the economic incentives (to corporations, communities, etc.) that perpetuate the problem.]