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Author (s), title/year/source

Theme 1 - Inefficient Spending

Theme 2 – Low-Risk Offender Alternatives

Theme 3 - Collateral Damage (Incarcerated Communities)

1. Ferner, New Report Details Devastating Effects Of Mass Incarceration On The U.S. / 2016/ Huffington Post

The U.S. spends $80 billion on incarceration each year and over $270 billion on the entire criminal justice system at the federal, state and local levels.

United States employs 2.5 times more corrections officers per capita than other nations, but employs 30 percent fewer police officers per capita

incarcerating more people likely entails jailing offenders who are on average lower-risk, meaning their incarceration will yield even fewer benefits to the public.

indirect costs to the prisoners themselves, their families and their communities, all collateral damages that can last for generations.

There are roughly 70 million adult Americans — nearly a third of the entire adult population — with some kind of a criminal record can keep ex-offenders from finding a job, not to mention one that is decent, safe and well-paying.

2. Katel, Downsizing Prisons / 2011 / CQ Researcher

Budget crises are forcing states to re-examine the cost of maintaining their prison and jail systems

states have been putting too many low-risk offenders in prison. They contend that expanding alternatives to incarceration would reduce prison costs and lower crime rates.

Diversion also enables offenders to make victim-restitution payments and meet their family responsibilities. “If you want victims to be restored, and to ensure that child-support payments are made, people should be out in the community working, rather than incapacitated”

3. BANKING ON BONDAGE: PRIVATE PRISONS AND MASS INCARCERATION / ACLU

While the nation's unprecedented rate of imprisonment deprives individuals of freedom, wrests loved ones from their families, and drains the resources of governments, communities, and taxpayers, the private prison industry reaps lucrative rewards

4. CEA, Economic Perspectives on Incarceration and the Criminal Justice System / 2016/ The White House

The direct government costs of the criminal justice system are significant

Given the total costs, some criminal justice policies, including increased incarceration, fail a cost-benefit test

The probability that a family is in poverty increases by nearly 40 percent while a father is incarcerated

Parental incarceration is a strong risk factor for a number of adverse outcomes

Having a criminal record makes it more difficult to find employment

5. Furman and Holtz-Eakin, Why Mass Incarceration Doesn’t Pay / 2016/ NYT

a general rule in economics — the law of diminishing marginal benefits — applies to incarcerating additional people or adding years to sentences

Finally, more than $80 billion is spent annually on corrections, or over $600 per household

the criminal justice system should be designed to ensure that the benefits of incarceration exceed the costs

Individuals incarcerated for nonviolent drug crimes — 50 percent of the federal prison population — pose a low risk, and the costs of incarcerating these people outweigh the benefits

There are other tools that can reduce crime more cost-effectively, including promoting employment and wage growth and investing in education

Time in prison not only means a loss of freedom, but it also means a loss of earnings, risks to the health and safety of the incarcerated, and prolonged absences from family that can strain marriages and increase behavioral problems in children

6. Clear, T. R. (2009). Imprisoning Communities: how mass incarceration makes disadvantaged neighborhoods worse.

Imprisonment “raids supplies of local human capital and leaves a gap in employable residents, thus depleting neighborhood economic strength”

Prior to incarceration, most prisoners are an economic resource to their neighborhoods and immediate families

7. Gottschalk, M. (2010). Cell blocks & red ink: mass incarceration, the great recession & penal reform. Daedalus, 139(3), 62-73.

the country’s extraordinary incarceration rate is “unsustainable economically.”

Dozens of states

cut their corrections budgets in 2009, and

many proposed closing penal facilities to

cover gaping budget gaps

has begun to investigate alternatives to incarceration, and last October, Congress ordered the Commission to review mandatory minimum sentencing

imprisonment rate tends to rise with the unemployment rate

Prisons provide few economic benefits to local communities, notably the rural areas that have been the primary sites for new prison construction since the 1980s

8. CBS News, The cost of a nation of incarceration / 2012

In a bad economy, just the expense of incarceration is beginning to create converts among state legislators faced with disastrous budget problems

State of Florida is building a so-called re-entry center for 400 non-violent inmates.

Here they'll cost taxpayers HALF what the state would spend on keeping them in prison.

In communities of color, you see devastating consequences as a result of our policies. Now, one out of three black men between the ages of 18 and 35 is in jail, in prison, on probation or on parole