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US-PRISON-STUDY
Half of US adults have family member who has been incarcerated: report
WASHINGTON, Dec 7, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Nearly half of all American adults
have an immediate family member who has experienced incarceration, according
to a new study published Thursday that spotlights the extent of mass
imprisonment in the United States.
The report comes as President Donald Trump has given his backing to a
bipartisan bill aimed at reforming sentences imposed for drug offenses, a
move that could begin to reduce the prison population after years of
spiraling growth.
The study by Cornell University and lobbying group FWD.us found that
approximately 45 percent of American adults (around 113 million people) have
an immediate family member who has been incarcerated for at least one night
in jail or prison.
It was based on online and phone surveys conducted on a nationally
representative sample of 4,041 adults in the summer of 2018.
One in seven US adults has an immediate family member who has been
incarcerated for at least one year, and one in 34 adults has had an immediate
family member spend 10 years or longer in prison, it added.
An estimated 6.5 million people, or one in 38, have an immediate family
member who is currently incarcerated in jail or prison.
Incarceration results in a variety of direct and indirect harms, according
to the study.
“Research has shown that even short periods of incarceration can be
devastating to people’s lives and additional punishments such as fines and
fees,” it said.
“Restrictions on employment and housing, and the loss of basic human rights
limit opportunities for success long after individuals have completed their
sentences.”
The study found that black people are 50 percent more likely than white
people to have had a family member incarcerated, and three times more likely
to have had a family member incarcerated for one year or longer.
People earning under $25,000 per year are 61 percent more likely than
people earning over $100,000 to have had a family member incarcerated — and
three times more likely to have had a family member in prison for a year or
longer.
The report said its findings “should serve as a wake-up call and a stark
reminder of how much work is needed to alleviate the harms caused by mass
incarceration and unravel the complicated tangle of laws that perpetuate it.”
The adoption of successive repressive laws since the 1980s has seen the
prison population explode. There are now more than 1.5 million people in
state and federal prisons on any given day, and nearly 11 million admissions
to local jails each year.
US jail and prison populations are four times larger than in 1980 and the
United States continues to incarcerate more people than any other countrys in
the world, the report said.
With 710 prisoners per 100,000 people, the US incarceration rate is far
ahead of Western democracies (147 in the United Kingdom, 118 in Canada, 108
in Belgium, 98 in France).
Last month, President Trump announced he would back a bipartisan prison
reform brought by a group of Republican and Democratic senators to shorten
prison sentences for certain nonviolent offenders.
In particular, it would abolish automatic penalties of 25 years in prison
in the event of a third conviction for a drug case, even a minor one.
Hardline conservatives could however stall its adoption.
BSS/AFP/MRI/0824 hrs