The U.S. currently imprisons a higher percentage of its population than any other country in the world. The number of prisoners in state and federal prisons has increased over five-fold in the last 30 years, from under 200,000 in 1970 to currently over 2 million people behind bars. Today, this massive prison expansion is fueled not by an actual increase in crime rates, but by harsh drug laws and wholesale criminalization of people of color, poor people, and youth. Racism and the criminalization of poverty are primary factors in the imprisonment binge devastating our communities. One out of every three African-American men in the US will go to prison in the course of their lifetime.
Women comprise the fastest growing segment of the prison population.
As the number of women behind bars grows, the detrimental effects are felt by a whole generation of children. Eighty percent of the women in prison are the mothers of children under 18. Rehabilitation was at one time a stated goal of the prison system. Today, funding for most educational and rehabilitative programs has been severed, prioritizing punishment and profit over people. According to Amnesty International's 1999 report, human rights abuses in U.S. prisons and jails range from overcrowding to extended solitary confinement, and from medical neglect to the sexual abuse of prisoners.