A decade after publishing the first edition, the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) released the 2024 version of its report, Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie. This new report provides a comprehensive picture of how many people are locked up in the U.S., in what types of facilities, and why.
In addition to showing that more than 1.9 million people are behind bars on any given day., the report discusses what it calls 0 of the most persistent myths about prisons, jails and crime.
The report includes 34 visualizations of justice system data. Among the conclusions:
--Many people in jail pretrial are there simply because they're too poor to pay their cash bail.
--Black people are overrepresented behind bars, making up about 42% of the prison and jail populations but only 14% of U.S. residents.
--Technical violations — rather than new crimes — are the main reason people on probation or parole are re-incarcerated.
Prison and jail populations have continued to rebound from their pre-pandemic lows, reversing a years-long decline in incarceration. This growth is not due to increased crime but rather the justice system returning to business as usual after pandemic-related slowdowns and the return of so-called "tough-on-crime" laws.
"The U.S. is at an inflection point in its failed experiment with mass incarceration. After years of progress reducing the number of people behind bars, many of the misguided policies that created this crisis in the first place are being resurrected," said PPI's Peter Wagner, co-author of the report.
"The choices made by state, local, and federal officials over the next few years will determine whether the country repeats past mistakes or chooses a better path that makes communities safer and reduces the number of people incarcerated."
PPI contends that reforming the justice system does not increase crime, harsher punishments don't deter crime, nor make communities safer and that jails and prisons are not equipped to provide mental health or substance use disorder treatment.
The original edition of Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie, provided the first comprehensive view of the systems of criminal confinement in the U.S.
PPI has also produced versions of the report that look at the incarceration of women and the incarceration of young people.
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