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Help eliminate racial injustice in the US through prison reform.
The US has the highest incarceration rates out of any other country in the world, and this rate still continues to increase every year. This causes major problems regarding overcrowding and resources.
African Americans are five times more likely to be incarcerated than whites. Yet if African Americans and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rate as whites, prison overcrowding would decrease by 40%.
Exploiting prisoners for their labor helps corporations gain profits with the rise of for-profit incarceration systems. This turns prisons into a private industry and gives the federal government a reason to uphold mass incarceration practices.
In the US, 43% of released prisoners return to prison before their first year out is over, showing that our current American crime rehabilitation system does nothing to prevent the crime from reocurring.
Having not committed any violent crimes, these prisoners would more so benefit from therapy and counseling, yet these psychological services are underdeveloped. Therefore, the majority of prisoners remain, further adding to the problem.
The US government denies most of its prisoners the right to vote, yet prisoners are still counted in the US Census. This means one thing: the more prisoners a region has, the more political representation it garners. Known as prison gerrymandering, this also gives politicians a reason to jail possible political opposition.
As two high schoolers caught in the midst of a global pandemic, we realized that current incarceration rates would pose a dangerous threat to prisoners' wellbeing. Join us in taking down the prison-industrial complex and ensuring a better future for all American citizens. Click here to learn how you can help and click here to learn more about this issue.