Almost two million people are detained in prisons, jails and other facilities in the United States. This means the U.S. imprisons “more people per capita than any other nation,” according to a report from the Prison Policy Initiative released earlier this year.
Still, murders have surged almost 40% since 2019 nationwide, and violent crimes grew overall.
With so many people in prison, why hasn’t crime disappeared?
The answer is complex, according to author Lenore Anderson, but she argues change is needed in the criminal justice system. Between the 1980s and 2010s, more than 32,000 laws were put in place to stop crime. But those law-and-order policies largely failed — despite high rates of incarceration, crime rates have ebbed and flowed and people of color have been imprisoned disproportionately.
We speak with Anderson about the criminal justice system in the U.S. and her argument for why rethinking justice is key to a safer, healthier society.
GUEST
Lenore Anderson, president of the Alliance for Safety and Justice and author of “In Their Names: The Untold Story of Victims’ Rights, Mass Incarceration, and the Future of Public Safety”
