Captivity by the Numbers

It is all too easy, but instructive nevertheless, to read off the troubling statistics: starting in the 1970s, the U.S. began to witness a drastic rise in its incarceration rate, skyrocketing from 161 out of every 100,000 U.S. residents behind bars in 1972 to about 767 per 100,000 near its peak in the second half of the 2000s (National Research Council 33). Due to the patchwork nature of the American criminal justice system, which includes a federal system, a system for each state, over 3,000 counties and more than 25,000 municipal systems, it is difficult to say just how many people are under state supervision at any given time. However, as of 2018 the Bureau of Justice Statistics indicates that in addition to the 2.3 million people held in prisons or jails in the United States, there are an estimated 4.5 million more on probation or parole (Wagner and Sawyer). Already in 2003, the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that one in every thirty-seven adults in America had been to prison in their lifetime (Bonczar 1). While recent years have seen a slight decline in overall incarceration rates, it has been estimated that it would take nearly 65 years for the current rate of decline to halve the prison population (Ghandnoosh 3). The costs of maintaining such a system, both in terms of financial expenditures and human wellbeing, are immense if not immeasurable.