From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America

by Elizabeth Hinton,
The Florida Courier, May 27, 2016

Representing 5 percent of the planet’s population and 25 percent of its prisoners, the United States is the incarceration capital the world. At last count, 2.2 million individuals were behind bars in the U.S, a 943 percent increase over the last 50 years, with an annual cost of $80 billion.