Mass Incarceration

There are approximately 2.3 million people in United States jails and prisons, which means that the U.S. incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. One of the driving forces of mass incarceration was the War on Drugs, which resulted in the number of people who were incarcerated for drug-related offenses increasing from 40,900 in 1980 to 452,964 in 2017. Black people are disproportionately impacted by mass incarceration. For example, Black women are 1.7 times more likely to be incarcerated than white women.