From: Sarah Ventura

Mass incarceration is a bipartisan issue and a human rights abuse. Solutions to mass incarceration draw on common values shared by both the political left and right.

The evidence that our country has a problem is clear. Since 1970, the number of people incarcerated in jails, prisons, and juvenile detention centers has increased by 700 percent so that the U.S. now incarcerates more people (both in absolute numbers and per capita) than any other country in the world.

Mass incarceration has shown a minimal impact on reducing crime rates and is costly at both a federal and local level. Mass incarceration disproportionately abuses people who are Black and brown and people who are poor.

If you doubt any of this, dont take my word for it. Dig into the research, see what you find.

The War on Drugs and the War on Crime hasnt worked unless the true purpose of each is social control via federal and state violence. Either mass incarceration is highly misguided, highly ineffective, and highly costly, or its straight-up evil perpetrated by big government.

Either way, it directly assaults the claimed values of both the left and the right.

Two well-researched books to read on this issue are The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander and Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear by Dr. Carl Hart. This is an issue we need to wrestle with together, as a local community, whether you want to defund the police, you back the blue, youre unsure, or youre somewhere in-between.

See the original post:

The war on us - Winona Post