Since the 1980s our prison population has more than quadrupled. Crime, of course, has not quadrupled. It’s been at historic lows.
We now lock up 2.2 million people, more than any other country in the world. A disproportionate number are people of color with Black people incarcerated at 5 times the rate of white people. Women—mostly mothers who are the primary breadwinners in their families—are the fastest growing population behinds bars.
NASA’s scraps first all-female spacewalk because there aren’t spacesuits that fit
We are tearing apart families, destroying futures, and wasting human potential on a mind-blowing scale. This does not happen accidentally. The truth is there’s a whole system of businesses and people that profit from taking away people’s freedom.
Building and staffing prisons is big business, especially in towns full of closed factories reeling from a loss of manufacturing jobs that’ve gone overseas or been made obsolete by technology. It’s an easy answer for politicians under pressure to create jobs.
