"Police and jails are supposed to promote public safety. Increasingly,
however, law enforcement is called upon to respond punitively to
medical and economic problems unrelated to public safety issues. As a
result, local jails are filled with people who need medical care and
social services, many of whom cycle in and out of jail without ever
receiving the help they need. Conversations about this problem are
becoming more frequent, but until now, these conversations have been
missing three fundamental data points: how many people go to jail each
year, how many return, and which underlying problems fuel this cycle.
In this report, we fill this troubling data gap with a new analysis of a federal survey, finding that at least 4.9 million people are arrested and jailed each year, and at least one in 4 of those individuals are booked into jail more than once during the same year.
Our analysis shows that repeated arrests are related to race and
poverty, as well as high rates of mental illness and substance use
disorders. Ultimately, we find that people who are jailed have much
higher rates of social, economic, and health problems that cannot and
should not be addressed through incarceration."
Read on...
1 comment:
Thoughtful blog, thanks for sharing.
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