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Section III: The Costs

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Section III: The Costs

  • Prison overcrowding
  • Strain on state budgets
  • In 2012 alone, the United States spent nearly $81 billion on corrections.
  • Spending on prisons and jails has increased at triple the rate of spending on Pre‐K‐12 public education in the last thirty years.
  • A criminal record can reduce the likelihood of a callback or job offer by nearly 50%. The negative impact of a criminal record is twice as large for African American applicants.
  • Infectious diseases are highly concentrated in corrections facilities.

Does mass incarceration increase public safety?

  • Crime rates have declined substantially since the early 1990s, but studies suggest that rising imprisonment has not played a major role in this trend.
  • Incarceration is particularly ineffective at reducing certain kinds of crimes, particularly youth and drug crimes.
  • People tend to “age out” of crime.
    • Crime starts to peak in the mid- to late- teenage years and begins to decline when individuals are in their mid-20s. It drops sharply as adults reach their 30s and 40s.
    • National Research Council: “Because recidivism rates decline markedly with age, lengthy prison sentences, unless they specifically target very high-rate or extremely dangerous offenders, are an inefficient approach to preventing crime by incapacitation.”

What are the mesages of these political cartoons?

Questions to consider:

  • From a cost perspective, why is mass incarceration an issue?
  • How does age play a role in whether or not mass incarceration is effective?
  • What do you think could be done to ensure public safety other than mass incarceration?
  • Looking forward: What do you predict are the causes of mass incarceration?

DMU Timestamp: March 12, 2020 00:41





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