Prisons, Racism and a New Project from an NYU Student with The Prison Policy Initiative
There are more than seven-million people incarcerated in the United States. Most are there for drug offenses. Most drug offenses are for marijuana, which is legal or decriminalized, at least for medicinal purposes, in a growing number of states. Plus, conservatively speaking, about 20,000 prisoners — some on death row, some certainly in solitary — are locked up for crimes they did NOT commit.
The incarceration rate in the United States is the highest in the world. While US citizens only represent 5% of the world’s population, 25% of the world’s inmates are incarcerated in the Land of the Brave, Home of the FREE. Approximately 1 in every 32 Americans is currently held by the (in)justice system.
And people who do not have enough money for quality legal representation or are simply not Caucasian, get arrested, sentenced and imprisoned at an alarmingly disproportionate rate.