Are Americans Finally Facing Up to the True Costs of Mass Incarceration?

[eridani]

http://www.thenation.com/article/are-americans-finally-facing-up-to-the-true-costs-of-mass-incarceration/

 The report, called Who Pays?: The True Cost of Incarceration on Families, happens to have dropped the same week as the latest Atlantic cover story from writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. The exhaustive, nine-chapter article focuses on what Coates calls “the gray wastes,” the prisons and jails where Wilson-Johnson’s husband and 2.2 million other Americans are warehoused and banished, as he writes, “beyond the promises and protections the government grants to its other citizens.” Those who eventually get out find it hard to reintegrate into society. Barriers to employment, affordable housing, education and public benefits such as food stamps are everywhere, as the report details:

 9 percent of those surveyed reported being ineligible for or denied housing because of their own or a loved one’s record.
Two-thirds of those interviewed said they wanted to return to school once released, but fewer than a third were able to continue with education or training.
Three-fourths said their experience trying to find work was very difficult or nearly impossible. A quarter was employed five years after release, and just 40 percent were employed full-time five years after release.
More than one in five respondents said they were denied public assistance such as welfare benefits or food stamps post-release.

Reading the report and the article side by side offers both statistics and intricate storytelling about human suffering, both the history that got us into this mess and suggestions—incremental as well as visionary— about how to get out of it. Coates’ reporting places a story like Wilson-Johnson’s in a national context. In one section, he travels to Maryland, where 15 percent of the state’s lifers—the largest percentage in the country — committed their crimes as juveniles. There, the average age of lifers who have been recommended for but denied release is 60. He writes, “These men and women are past the age of ‘criminal menopause,’ as some put it, and most pose no threat to their community.”

[lonestarnot]

1. I doubt it. The justice economy is running like a wildebeest

[Mnemosyne]

2. K&R nt