No matter how many times you’ve heard the statistics, they never lose their power to shock: the United States is home to less than 5 percent of the world’s population but has 25 percent of its prisoners.1 Today, the United States incarcerates five times more people than it did in 1970. The total number of people incarcerated in state or federal prison rose from 200,000 to 1.6 million between 1972 and 2014.2 California’s incarceration rate quintupled, from about 100 for every 100,000 residents to nearly 500. Between 1984 and 2005, the state opened twenty-one prisons.3 The reason, according to
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