“Prison Policy Initiative Updates.” Today is June 1 that I’m recording this, 2026.
So, the Prison Policy Initiative just updated its mass incarceration report, and as extensive as it is, I won’t read it all, and I’m getting this from Prison Legal News, which is published by the humanrightsdefensecenter.org. I highly recommend that you look them up, and maybe subscribe someone you know in prison to their publications. So, the Prison Policy Initiative included ten myths that they’re canceling, that they’re saying these are just this is crap. And so, here’s what they are, in order:
1. Crime is up. Well, according to crime statistics from the FBI, crime has steadily declined over the last decade, with violent crime in 2025 16% lower than 2015. Likewise, property crimes are down almost 38%. Neither does the data reflect immigrants committing crimes more often than anyone else.
2. Releasing nonviolent drug offenders would end mass incarceration. While the federal system has some 86,000 of its 201 prisoners incarcerated for drugs, some four out of five people in prison or jail are in for something other than drugs. As a side note, we have a touch over two million people incarcerated in the US.
3. Violent crime involves physical harm. The category is more of a substitute phrase for serious or non-serious crime, and even that fails to draw an accurate picture of what those crimes entail.
4. People in prison for violent or sexual crimes are too dangerous to be released. People who have committed violent or sexual crimes are least likely to recidivate. Those guilty of rape or sexual assault have a rearrest rate of 20% lower than all other offense types.
5. Some people need to go to jail to get treatment and services. Jails and prisons are designed for punishment, not care. People held there are in need of medical care and services, but instead receive wait lists for care and solitary confinement for mental health, sometimes resulting in intoxication deaths and suicides. Some of you will note that I’ve reported on this before.
6. Harsh punishments deter crime, making us safer. Not only do they not deter crime, incarceration actually increases the risk of future crimes after release.
7. Crime victims support long prison sentences. Three quarters of 1500 victims surveyed preferred options beyond prison. They appear to care more about the health and safety of their communities than retribution.
8. Private prisons are the corrupt part of mass incarceration. Less than 9% of all incarcerated people are held in private prisons, while some states imprison more people in privately run facilities than others, these companies function more as parasites on a massive publicly owned system than the heart of it. One effect of the broader prison-related private section is offloading the cost of services, such as FO’s and medical care, onto the incarcerated.
9. Prisons are factories behind fences that exist to provide companies a huge labor force. State-owned correctional institutes, excuse me, state-owned correctional industries that pay very little or nothing in at least five states have workforces made up of only about 6% incarcerated people. This again, however, shifts the cost of incarceration onto the prisoners.
10. Expanding community supervision, including electronic monitoring, is the best way to reduce incarceration. A 2023 study showed that electronic monitoring technology is unreliable and subject to false alarms and security breaches. As a result, it is another path to incarceration by way of technical violations.
Roughly 45% of adult Americans, 113 million, have an immediate family member who has been to prison with a disproportionate impact on minorities, and the poor Black Americans who are just 14% of the U.S general population, but make up 42% of its prison and jail population. Meanwhile, the population of elderly prisoners is growing. Prisons and jails hold almost 193,000 people over 55, many due to excessive sentences. As a result, the financial and social costs of mass incarceration seem to outweigh any perceived benefits. Prison Policy Initiative suggests that we should instead work and develop strategies that shrink our incarceration rate while making it safer.
Now, I’d like to point out that, as I’ve reported before, in 1973 the National Advisory Commission for Criminal Justice, which was appointed by the U.S. government, suggested that we decarcerate and end prisons and shift that money to other programs shown to work better, and yet here we are, 53 years later, with the same problem expanding more and more. So there’s the Prison Policy Initiative update. You can find far more if you go online and look it up. You can probably find more at prisonlegalnews.org through humanrightsdefensecenter.org. I’d also like to give a shout out to those protesters in New Jersey. Keep it up and escalate if necessary. The prisons have to be shut down nationwide.
My name is David Annarelli. I’m a contributing writer, Prison Journalism Project. You can check me out at davidannarelli.wordpress.com, I’m on Instagram david_annarelli. Thank you very much.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio
