The American prison system has been filled with the nation’s youth. More often than not, America’s black, hispanic, and often impoverished youth are fed to the machine in comparison to their white counterparts.
But a change is happening as less of America’s youth are being arrested and put into the system. Recidivism rates are also declining.
According to The Atlantic, “After peaking at just more than 1.6 million Americans in 2009, the prison population was just more than 1.2 million at the end of 2023 (the most recent year for which data is available), and is on track to fall to about 600,000—a total decline of roughly 60 percent.”
It’s an extremely positive situation, as more kids and adolescents will be able to experience a free, full life cycle rather than being placed on indefinite halt in a broken prison system that historically preys on their mistakes and misfortune.
In 2007, the imprisonment rate for 18- and 19-year-old men was more than five times that of men over the age of 64 reported the Atlantic. Said the outlet: “Today, men in those normally crime-prone late-adolescent years are imprisoned at half the rate that senior citizens are today.”
This decline of the prison population has been happening slowly over a decade, according to the publication, “but has been little noticed because it takes so long for the huge prison population of longer provenance to clear.”
Less people going into the prison system is great progress, especially as it means less people will be exploited doing modern-day slave work presented to the general public as penal labor. As the prison population declines, the country will eventually be forced to curb their reliance on the zero-to-one dollar, back-breaking jobs forced upon inmates that generate billions for the prisons and states 一 some of which do not even offer any wage for the work.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “Nationally, incarcerated workers produce more than $2 billion per year in goods and more than $9 billion per year in services for t America’s Youth is No Longer Feeding the American Prison Machinehe maintenance of the prisons.”
Today’s America and states who heavily benefit from the work of inmates are unfortunately ill-equipped to deal with the inevitable economic ramifications of a declining prison population and penal labor workforce. Even so, they will eventually have to reconcile with the fact that the times are changing and America’s youth are not just fodder for the grossly unjust prison system to profit off of.