Collateral Costs: Incarceration’s Effects on Economic Mobility
The Pew Charitable Trusts (2010)
“Collateral Costs” is a report based on research by Professor Bruce Western of Harvard University and Professor Becky Pettit of the University of Washington. The publication is a collaborative effort between Pew’s Economic Mobility Project and Public Safety Performance Project. The report examines the effects of incarceration on the economic mobility of formerly incarcerated people and their families.
The High Budgetary Cost of Incarceration
Center for Economic and Policy Research
June 2010, John Schmitt, Kris Warner, and Sarika Gupta
The United States currently incarcerates a higher share of its population than any other country in the world. We calculate that a reduction in incarceration rates just to the level we had in 1993 (which was already high by historical standards) would lower correctional expenditures by $16.9 billion per year, with the large majority of these savings accruing to financially squeezed state and local governments. As a group, state governments could save $7.6 billion, while local governments could save $7.2 billion.
These cost savings could be realized through a reduction by one-half in the incarceration rate of exclusively non-violent offenders, who now make up over 60 percent of the prison and jail population.
One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections
The PEW Center on the States (March 26, 2009)
Explosive growth in the number of people on probation or parole has propelled the population of the American corrections system to more than 7.3 million, or 1 in every 31 U.S. adults, according to a report released today by the Pew Center on the States. The vast majority of these offenders live in the community, yet new data in the report finds that nearly 90 percent of state corrections dollars are spent on prisons.
Resolved: Inmates Make Tough Debaters
The New York Times (May 7, 2010)
The two debate teams sat across a large room on Thursday night waiting for their face-off to begin. On one side were the visitors, four undergraduates at the New School, and their equally young coach poring over documents and comparing last-minute notes. Across the room the home team, four men in their 30s and 40s, leaned back in their seats, pictures of poise, their neatly arranged index cards at the ready but untouched.
Outside Chance
The Magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (May 11, 2010)
After years in and around the criminal justice system, students find that their best hope for staying off the streets and in school is to get support, especially from other students who are making the same transition.