How Mass Incarceration Was Built in the United States — And How We Can Undo It
With an incarceration rate exceeding 700 people for every 100,000, Americans have built a prison monstrosity that has few parallels in history — destroying untold millions of lives and families in just a few decades. We need to study the economic origins of this mass incarceration system in order to dismantle it.
When it comes to the policies necessary to deconstruct American mass incarceration, there’s not much consensus — because no one can agree on what exactly led to its construction in the first place.
There is a growing consensus that American mass incarceration is not only wrong but a moral abomination.
With an incarceration rate exceeding 700 people for every 100,000, Americans have built a prison monstrosity that has few parallels in history — destroying untold millions of lives and families in just a few decades. Future generations will no doubt wonder how the wealthiest, most developed country in the world ever tolerated such barbarism.
But when it comes to the policies necessary to deconstruct this leviathan, there’s not much consensus at all — even among the Left. And that’s likely because no one can agree on what exactly led to its construction in the first place.
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