With five percent of the world's population, the U.S. has close to a quarter of the world's prisoners. How did the American criminal justice system go so wrong?
How can you tell when a democracy is dead? When concentration camps spring up and everyone shivers in fear? Or is it when concentration camps spring up and no one shivers in fear because everyone knows they're not for "people like us" (in Woody Allen's marvelous phrase) but for the others, the troublemakers, the ones you can tell are guilty merely by the color of their skin, the shape of their nose or their social class?

Ratio of Percent of Blacks Among Resident Population to Blacks Among Incarcerated Population

Between yearend 1995 and yearend 2005, the incarcerated population grew an average 3.3% annually. Population growth during the 12-month period ending December 31, 2005 was lower in State prisons (up 1.3%) than in Federal prison (up 5.1%) and local jails (up 4.7%).

* At least 95% of all State prisoners will be released from prison at some point; nearly 80% will be released to parole supervision.

* At yearend 2002, 1,440,655 prisoners were under the jurisdiction of State or Federal correctional authorities.

* In 2001, about 592,000 State prison inmates were released to the community after serving time in prison.

* Nearly 33% of State prison releases in 1999 were drug offenders, 25% were violent offenders and 31% were property offenders.

* 670,169 adults were under State parole supervision at yearend 2002.

* By the end of 2000, 16 States had abolished discretionary release from prison by a parole board for all offenders.

* Among State parole discharges in 2000, 41% successfully completed their term of supervision; relatively unchanged since 1990.

The Real Cost of Prisons Project believes if the movement to end mass incarceration is to advance it is vital that grassroots community activists gain a deeper understanding of the social, political and economic forces fuel and shape the criminal injustice system. If we are to grasp why more than two million people are incarcerated in the United States we must look at complex set of entwined relationships situated in race, gender, class and place.

Consider these facts: Despite the record growth performance of the U.S. economy in the 1990s, hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, remain lower than they were thirty years ago. The ranks of the working poor have swollen, partially due to the introduction of work requirements for welfare programs. Economic successes, at least those based on mainstream measurements, have not produced substantial benefits for those most in need. Basic health care remains out of reach for a significant portion of the population, household debts have risen to their highest level in recent U.S. history, unequal educational opportunities abound, and poverty remains an entrenched reality in the richest nation on earth.
Many social inequalities, like those perpetuated in the criminal justice system, have direct connections to material inequalities produced by current economic policies. These economic inequalities have reached unprecedented heights. In 1998, the average value of the financial assets of the wealthiest 10% of U.S. households was over 300 times the average holdings of the bottom 25% of all households. The context in which people’s lives unfold – including the evolution of the U.S. criminal justice system and patterns of incarceration – is deeply affected by the type of economy in which we live. A better understanding of the political economy of the U.S. criminal justice system has become increasingly important for the work of activists.

What is political economy? Political economy is an approach to analyzing economic issues in which the political influence, the amount of wealth, and the social position of key players and socio-economic groups is explicitly taken into account. Political economy not only examines total costs and benefits, but explicitly asks the question: who’s benefiting and why?