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Background Information
Mass Incarceration in the United States
"During the same period when crime rates were
declining, prison populations soared. According to a
recent report by the U.S. Department of Justice, at the
end of the year 2001, there were 2,100,146 people
incarcerated in the United States. The terms and
numbers as they appear in this government report
require some preliminary discussion. I hesitate to make
the unmediated use of such statistical evidence because
it can discourage the very critical thinking that out
to be elicited by an understanding of the prison
industrial complex. It is precisely the abstraction of
numbers that plays such a central role in criminalizing
those who experience the misfortune of imprisonment.
There are many different kinds of men and women in the
prisons, jails and INS and military detention centers,
whose lives are erased by the Bureau of Justice
Statistics figures. The numbers recognize no
distinction between the woman who is imprisoned on a
drug conspiracy and the man who is in prison for
killing his wife, a man who might actually end up
spending less time behind bars than the
woman."
"With this observation in mind the statistical
breakdown is as follows: There were 1,324,465 people in
‘federal and state prisons,’ 15,852 in
‘territorial prisons,’ 631,240 in ‘local
jails,’ 8,761 in “Immigration and
Naturalization Service detention facilities,’
2,436 in ‘military facilities,’ 1,912 in
‘jails in Indian country,’ and 108,965 in
‘juvenile facilities.’ In the ten years
between 1990 and 2000, 351 new places of confinement
were opened in the states and more than 528,000 beds
were added, amounting to 1,320 state facilities,
representing an eighty-one percent increase. Moreover,
there are currently 84 federal facilities and 264
private facilities.”
- Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?, Seven Stories Press, 2003.
"The population of federal and state prisons
and local jails grew 2.6 percent last year, according
to new Justice Department data. Since 1995, it has
risen nearly 30 percent. By the end of last year, the
proportion of United States residents who were behind
bars was a staggering 1 in 143. The nation's
incarceration rate is among the world's highest, 5 to
10 times as high as in many other industrialized
nations."
- From an editorial “The Growing Inmate
Population”, August 1, 2003, New York Times
“Violent and property crimes dipped in 2002 to
their lowest levels since records started being
compiled 30 years ago, and have dropped more than 50
percent in the last decade, the Justice Department
reported today. The annual survey by the Bureau of
Justice Statistics identified about 23 million crime
victims last year, down slightly from the year before
and far below the 44 million recorded when studies
began in 1973.”
- Associated Press, August 24, 2003.
The number of women incarcerated grew by 592% from
12,279 in 1977 to 85,031 in 2001. In 1977, there were
23 men for every woman in state and federal prisons. In
2001 there were 15 men for every woman in prison.
- Source: Women’s Prison Association and Home, WPA
Focus on Women & Justice, August 2003.
“By the end of 2001, one in every 37 adults in the
U.S. has either done time in a prison or were
incarcerated in a state or federal prison. If current
incarceration rates hold, 6% of all Americans, 11% of
all men, 17% of Hispanic men and 32% of all African
American men born in 2001 are likely to end up in
prison at some point in their lifetime.”
- National Resource Center on Prisons and Communities
Why Have A Real Cost of Prisons Project?
The Real Cost of Prisons Project believes if the
movement to end mass incarceration is to advance it is
vital that grassroots community activists gain a deeper
understanding of the social, political and economic
forces fuel and shape the criminal injustice system. If
we are to grasp why more than two million people are
incarcerated in the United States we must look at
complex set of entwined relationships situated in race,
gender, class and place.
Consider these facts: Despite the record growth
performance of the U.S. economy in the 1990s, hourly
wages, adjusted for inflation, remain lower than they
were thirty years ago. The ranks of the working poor
have swollen, partially due to the introduction of work
requirements for welfare programs. Economic successes,
at least those based on mainstream measurements, have
not produced substantial benefits for those most in
need. Basic health care remains out of reach for a
significant portion of the population, household debts
have risen to their highest level in recent U.S.
history, unequal educational opportunities abound, and
poverty remains an entrenched reality in the richest
nation on earth.
Many social inequalities, like those perpetuated in the
criminal justice system, have direct connections to
material inequalities produced by current economic
policies. These economic inequalities have reached
unprecedented heights. In 1998, the average value of
the financial assets of the wealthiest 10% of U.S.
households was over 300 times the average holdings of
the bottom 25% of all households. The context in which
people’s lives unfold – including the
evolution of the U.S. criminal justice system and
patterns of incarceration – is deeply affected by
the type of economy in which we live. A better
understanding of the political economy of the U.S.
criminal justice system has become increasingly
important for the work of activists.
What is political economy? Political economy is an
approach to analyzing economic issues in which the
political influence, the amount of wealth, and the
social position of key players and socio-economic
groups is explicitly taken into account. Political
economy not only examines total costs and benefits, but
explicitly asks the question: who’s benefiting and
why?
The Real Cost of Prisons Project provides activists and
others who want to have a deeper understanding of the
facts and the skills they need to make effective
arguments that specifically deal with changing the
criminal justice system.
Activists need training to succeed. Training is needed
to better understand the inter-relationship of issues
to broaden the coalitions and increase effectiveness
for press work and outreach strategies. Simultaneously,
activists must learn more about the areas in which they
organize. Deeper knowledge makes for more articulate
spokespeople, better leaflet writers, and more
effective debaters. Deeper knowledge makes activists
more engaged with the issues, more daring, less afraid
to grapple with new ideas. Providing activists with the
skills to understand the economy allows them to read
between the lines and develop their own analysis about
what is happening to them in their communities and
neighborhoods. “Capacity building” is more
than a set of skills. “Capacity building” is
providing the analytical tools needed to create deeper
and sustained work.
Recent polling (Peter Hart, February 2002) revealed
that it is not only activists who are questioning the
economic and personal costs of three strikes
legislation and mandatory minimums. Whether due to
budget deficits or the exploding numbers of imprisoned
non-violent offenders, the public is now questioning
the efficacy of imprisoning millions on drug
convictions and is again looking to treatment rather
than punishment. At this moment on a state and local
level, there appears to be a re-thinking of the
draconian legislation of the 1980’s and 90’s,
an organizing space in which activists can build on
changing public attitudes.
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