From [HERE] Last week The Prison Policy Initiative released Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie(link is external). This report provides a comprehensive view of how many people are locked up in the U.S., in what kinds of facilities, and why. It pieces together the most recent national data on state prisons, federal prisons, local jails, and other systems of confinement to provide a snapshot of mass incarceration in the U.S.

Highlights from the report include:

• Prison populations are starting to rebound. Although prison populations are still lower than they've been in decades, prison populations are beginning to increase as pandemic-related slowdowns in the criminal legal system are no longer driving down prison admissions. Additionally, officials continue to release fewer people from prison than before the pandemic.

• Recent claims about increasing crime are not supported by data. Crime rates remain at near historic lows. However, some in law enforcement and on the right have sought to blame changes to the criminal legal system -- such as bail reform, changes to police budgets, or electing "progressive" prosecutors -- for increases in some crime rates since the start of the pandemic. However, these claims are not supported by the evidence: murder rates were an average of 40% higher in "red" states compared to blue states in 2020, police budgets have recently increased in the vast majority of cities and counties in the country, and places that did not implement any of these reforms also saw increases in crime rates.

• In total, roughly 1.9 million people are incarcerated in the United States, 803,000 people are on parole, and a staggering 2.9 million people are on probation.

PUTTING YOU IN GREATER CONFINEMENT. Racists are obsessed with crime statistics in Black communities. According to the Sentencing Project, “Researchers have shown that crime reporting exaggerates crime rates and exhibits both quantitative and qualitative racial biases. This includes a tendency . . to exaggerate rates of black offending and white victimization and to depict black suspects in a less favorable light than whites.“ Under the pretense of being concerned about the well-being of Black people, the liberal white media in urban areas in particular, sensationalize crime with overblown coverage and hyper alertness. To be explicitly clear, it is a guise because we live in a system of racism/white supremacy in which most white people (or the most powerful white people) seek to dominate or seek cooperative control of non-white people with master-servant relations in all areas of people activity and project and maintain unequal power and conditions in a white over Black system. Racists, either self-described as liberal or conservative, have no intention of changing this arrangement because they are the permanent enemies of non-white people. Belief in the fantasy of “race” and hence their superiority necessitates such a result. White liberals and conservatives spare no cost when it comes to placing Black people in greater confinement. Dr. Amos Wilson states,

"Given the historical and contemporary virulence of White racism in America and the injustice toward Blacks that such racism engenders, the number of arrests, incarcerations, and in many instances, convictions of Black males should be viewed with a jaundiced eye. The willingness of White Americans to heavily tax themselves in order to finance accelerated and increased prison construction, rapidly expanding police forces and so-called criminal justice system personnel, burgeoning private police and security establishments; their willingness to finance the incarcera­tion of a Black male prisoner upwards of $30,000 to $40,000 per year, in sharp contrast to their unwillingness to tax themselves to provide for the appropriate funding of the education of Black children and to commit themselves to the ending of racist employment practices; to provide adequate housing medical care, food and clothing; clearly implies that alleged Black male criminality plays a very important role in defining the collective White American ego and personality.” [MORE]