March 16, 2016
Categories: Justice Reform

The “Big Picture” regarding mass incarceration in the US

Wait, does the United States 000001secondchancebutton-smaller_0have 1.4 million or more than 2 million people in prison? And do the 636,000 people released every year include the people getting out of local jails? Frustrating questions like these abound because our systems of federal, state, local, and other types of confinement — and the data collectors that keep track of them — are so fragmented. There is a lot of interesting and valuable research out there, but varying definitions and other incompatibilities make it hard — for both people new to criminal justice and for experienced policy wonks — to get the big picture. Read more about it here.