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> We can and do love building prisons. Not so much any longer. The US incarceration rate is at a 20 year low and keeps falling. We've been reducing the prison
by adventured 6y ago
> We can and do love building prisons.
Not so much any longer. The US incarceration rate is at a 20 year low and keeps falling. We've been reducing the prison population for a decade now.
For example the black male imprisonment rate began declining finally during the second year of George W Bush's Presidency. It has dropped by around 36% since the year 2001.
The US incarceration rate began declining about the same time we began building more private prisons (for the record, I'm ideologically against private prisons), which entirely goes against the common propaganda that private prisons would result in a lot more people in prison. Turns out, of course, that it was evil government actions and policies that did all those very bad things, like the war on drugs and putting millions of people in prison unjustly and holding them there for excessive durations of time (mandatory minimum sentencing laws).
- zachrose 6y ago> The US incarceration rate is at a 20 year low and keeps falling. Technically true, but man oh man do we have a ways to go before the war on drugs is mitigated[1]. Based on the trend of the last ~10 years, we're due to reach 1980 levels of prison population in the 23rd century[2]. [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._incarceration_rates_1925_onwards.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._incarceration_r... [2] https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/u-s-prison-population-trends-massive-buildup-and-modest-decline/ https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/u-s-prison-po... (eye-balling Table 1)
- downrightmike 6y agoSo you're saying we have vacancy. Even better.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoThat's an misleading stat. Incarceration trends are highly variable by state. https://www.sentencingproject.org/the-facts/#detail?state1Option=Texas&state2Option=Hawaii https://www.sentencingproject.org/the-facts/#detail?state1Op...
- vinay427 6y agoThe overall incarceration rate wouldn't be misleading with this information, although the correlation they draw with privatization of prisons in some states very well could be. Is there a specific pair of states you would refer to here?