According to census.gov, about 4.4% of the world's population resides in the United States. However, nearly 25% of the world's incarcerated population lives in the U.S. That's a problem.
The United States justice system has taken a lot of heat as of late, and for good reason. U.S. prisons see the highest recidivism rates in the world, meaning that those who commit crimes do not come out of jail reformed and ready to reenter society, but instead are thrown back into the same social, economic, and emotional situation that they were before, likely to commit the same crimes. In fact, the National Institute of Justice found that 67.8% of those who left their jail cell saw it again within 3 years.
This huge problem of repeat offenders stems from a systematic misjudgment of the purpose of a prison system. The purpose of putting people in prison, ideally, is that when they come out, they've come to terms with their crimes and are ready to reenter the world and become a healthy and contributing part of society. The current system in the United States, as shown by the insanely high recidivism and incarceration rates, takes as many people who've done something wrong as they can and locks them up. Then, they come out and have no more marketable skills than they did before and are likely to go out and commit more crimes.
Furthermore, the United States has not done the best job making it easy for former prisoners to reenter society. A study published on Prison Legal News found that former felons were 15 to 30% less likely to find employment and worked for 6 to 11 weeks less after being released from incarceration. It also found that the skyrocketing incarceration rate is not due to an increase in crime; in fact, the crime rate has decreased an astounding amount since 1980. We seem to be locking more people up and then giving them fewer opportunities when they've served their time, leading to harmful effects on the U.S. economy like a decreased productivity rate and a larger unemployed population.
It's time the United States take another look at the way we treat criminals before, during, and after their incarceration. It is not enough to cast them out from society and not help them at all. Crime stems from other situations, and we need to address those in order to make sure that those who are incarcerated can lead happy, healthy, reformed lives after serving their time in the U.S. prison system. The United States has an amazing opportunity to grow as a nation economically, politically, and socially by helping reform the prison system. It's time we seize it.
