The justice system in the United States is designed to punish — and rehabilitate if possible — people who have committed crimes as a tool to secure public safety. The system is supposed to be fair and promote justice. Many years ago we made our criminal justice policies tougher, but in a way that turned out to be neither just nor equitable.
Since then, we’ve realized our justice system is also terrible for your health.
As a nation, we have tried to lock our problems away and are now seeing the harmful impacts of mass incarceration on our society at-large. We have the largest prison population in the world by a large margin — with more than 2.3 million people locked up. More than 60 percent of prisoners are people of color. We have nearly 750,000 black men behind bars, which is more than the total prison populations in India, Japan, England, Germany, Argentina, Canada, Finland, Lebanon and Israel combined. Nearly one-third of federal prisoners are Hispanic, and the number of women in prison is rising 50 percent faster than men. Sixteen states put more people behind bars than in college housing. Since 1980, we’ve seen a nearly 800 percent increase in the federal prison population.
[For more of this story, written by Georges Benjamin, go to http://www.reportingonhealth.o...em-hazard-our-health]
Comments (0)