How profoundly disturbing is this? I’m of half a mind to teach my children to skip over the “land of the free” portion of our national anthem, for the sake of honesty. These illustrative and depressing data are from a new Hamilton Project policy memo from Brookings.
Despite the ongoing decline in crime, the incarceration rate in the United States remains at a historically unprecedented level. This high incarceration rate can have profound effects on society; research has shown that incarceration may impede employment and marriage prospects among former inmates, increase poverty depth and behavioral problems among their children, and amplify the spread of communicable diseases among disproportionately impacted communities (Raphael 2007). These effects are especially prevalent within disadvantaged communities and among those demographic groups that are more likely to face incarceration, namely young minority males.
This is a serious social justice issue, and incidentally, one upon which libertarians have always been on the right side of history. Not that I’m trying to paint Brookings with the radical liberty brush, mind you, I’m just tired of hearing libertarians uniformly derided in social justice circles when they could be working together on curing social ills like mass incarceration.
Read the full report here.
