In other words, approximately one in every 117 adult males is in prison. For those 1.7 million individuals, conditions tend to be bad. U.S. prisons tend to be violent, unsafe and unclean places where prisoners frequently are subject to sexual and other abuse. And although the majority of criminals are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes, sentences have gotten longer and possibilities for parole have diminished. The report notes that these terms increasingly are served in jails run by private corrections companies.
Racial discrimination continues to be a major issue.
HRW's data showed that a black man in America is 8.5 times more likely to be incarcerated than a white man. As a side effect of the high incarceration rate, in 1998 an estimated 3.9 million U.S. citizens were denied the right to vote, including over one million who had fully completed their sentences.