By 2011, one in every 178 U.S. residents will live in a state or federal prison if criminal justice and social policies don’t shift.That staggering projection was released in a report by the Public Safety Performance Project of the Pew Charitable Trust. According to the report, the U.S. will see an increase of more than 192,000 inmates for a total of 1.7 million by 2011.
The number of female prisoners will jump by 16 percent versus 14 percent for men.
The increase comes with a high price tag: States will have to spend 15 billion for operational costs alone.
Topping the list for more prisoners are states with large Latino populations.
New York state’s prison population is expected to remain stable. But this should not put us at any ease.
While the state’s population is 62 percent white, 81 percent of its prisoners are black or Hispanic, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.
Two-thirds of the state’s prisoners come from our city, specifically a handful of low-income neighborhoods.
As the report indicates, building more cells is not the solution. Instead, what is needed are preventive polices to reduce recidivism, and an evaluation of sentencing and release practices for nonviolent offenders, who constitute the majority of people in prison.
But one of our biggest preventive measures, especially for young people, needs to be top priority investment in education. Quality education needs to be the battle-cry for every city and state.
And with more than 100,000 people incarcerated in New York, an aggressive effort across all sectors needs to be waged against the racial and economic disparities, as well as the stigma attached to ex felons, that create too easy of a track to prison.
