Editor’s Desk: Issue Three
According to data collected by the Prison Policy Institute, in 2020, the American criminal justice system held almost 2.3 million people. The United States only accounts for 3% of the global population, yet detains 25% of the world’s prison population. Is our country truly full of dangerous people who are better locked away?
In West Virginia, our prison population is currently roughly 731 inmates per 100,000 people, higher than every other democracy in the world. How much does this cost our state? The Vera Institute reveals that West Virginia spends about $27,000 per prisoner annually. That’s more than our per capita income of $26,480 and amounts to a total spending of around $280 million per year. The United States spends almost $43 billion dollars a year to maintain our prison system. Imagine if we spent even a quarter of that on community resources to solve the issues that land people in prison in the first place. Our country and localities would look very differently.
That takes us to another question: what leads to or causes incarceration; is it primarily crime? Most criminally prosecuted instances link back to trauma and poverty, growing up around violence, drugs, gang activity and/or toxic family settings, catching people within a space of crime largely without a choice from the start. This doesn’t include white-collar crime, in which the wealthy are able to pay their way to ‘justice’ and bypass incarceration.
The policing and prison system is also historically rooted in racism, having its beginnings in America as ‘slave patrols’ that captured escaped slaves to be returned to their masters. This discrimination only carried forward with the Jim Crow era and continued frameworks of racism within the legal system. According to data from the US Census Bureau, Black Americans make up 13% of the general U.S. population, yet 40% of our prison and jail population. Clearly, the disproportionate amount of people of color behind bars reveals a need to reckon with the foundation of the justice system. And, I haven’t even touched on the ‘war on drugs,’ its discriminatory basis, and how this further broadened the prison system.
There are countless astounding and disturbing statistics about the United States prison population, but the basic question must be asked: where has “the land of the free” gone wrong? And what is to be done? Clearly, there is a lot of work needed to realize a new system of justice. In her new book We Do This 'Til We Free Us, long time prison abolitionist and activist Mariame Kaba asks us to be rooted in optimism and imagination. “Changing everything might sound daunting, but it also means there are many places to start, infinite opportunities to collaborate, and endless imaginative interventions and experiments to create. Let’s begin our abolitionist journey not with the question ‘What do we have now, and how can we make it better?’ Instead, let’s ask, ‘What can we imagine for ourselves and the world?’ If we do that, then boundless possibilities of a more just world await us.”
What I want to highlight is what we can do right now, both individually and as a community, on the outside. West Virginia’s recidivism rate, or the rate at which prisoners return to prison after being released, sits around 25%, which is lower than most states. We have a big problem, but we know a path forward. We can write letters to prisoners. We can advocate for peer-reentry coaches who help connect former prisoners to important resources as they reintegrate to society. We can expand the number of halfway houses in our communities, providing people a place to land once they are released, preventing people from ending up without shelter or going back to prison. We can push for more entryways to employment, making it easier for those with criminal records to gain a sustainable income. Our goal is to make sure our previously incarcerated citizens do not find themselves behind bars again, and all of the above activities have proven to reduce recidivism.
Within my work at HoH-Share, Inc., I've met so many formerly incarcerated people who have brought me joy and inspiration. They’ve done the inner work we’re all striving to do and transformed themselves. They are true examples of our human capacity to grow, to invite love into our lives, both for ourselves and for one another. Ultimately, we must transform our perception and recognize that true justice does not cut-off, but rather unites and connects, and let this inform our opinions of those previously incarcerated. As always, I hope you read the stories within this issue and find inspiration to help those reentering society post-incarceration. This will be our way forward in building a better world outside the walls.