Mass Incarceration is a term used to describe the increase in the number of people put in jail over a certain period. In recent years, America has had more than two million people put in jail. Most, for minor crimes that were not worth the sentence they received. Privately owned prisons actually make more money based on how many prisoners are in the jail. Organizations like the ACLU are working to cut the number of citizens in prisons by half by the year 2020. The United states spends a whopping 80 billion dollars on keeping people in jail each year. From less than three hundred thousand people in United States prisons in 1972 to over one million by the year 2000, The United States holds more of their own people in prisons than any other nation. We imprison more people than China and Russia despite having a significantly smaller population than both nations.
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This had very little effect however as violent crimes were as high as ever. The city’s goals are now more focused on only putting people who are a threat to public safety in jail and keeping nonviolent offenders out.
However, New Orleans have recently been considering spending millions of dollars to expand a known troubled prison. It was only built with upwards of one thousand beds but now wish to build even more which will only lead to more citizens being imprisoned. A few months after the jail was built a man that was awaiting trial died after his sickle cell disease was ignored and untreated. In addition to this, the facility lacks any mental health providers and has had trouble with inmates committing suicide while waiting months for their trials. The owners of said prison have blamed it on not having enough prisoners to fill the beds and therefore not having enough money to build psychiatric facilities. The problem, however lies with them not building the need facilities in the first place and now they are asking for more sp4ace to build more beds to house more