Warehoused and Forgotten: Immigrants Trapped in US Shadow Private Prison System ACLU
go to original June 15, 2014

The U.S. is locking up more undocumented immigrants than ever, generating lucrative profits for the nation's largest prison companies. The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down. (TheYoungTurks)
 

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Today, the United States has just 5% of the world’s population but nearly 25% of the world’s prisoners. But it has not always been this way. Thanks to the “War on Drugs,” irrationally harsh sentencing regimes, and a refusal to consider evidence-based alternatives, the U.S. prison population grew by more than 700% between 1970 and 2009 - far outpacing both population growth and crime rates.

In the past decade, the growing criminalization of immigration has further contributed to this mass incarceration crisis. According to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) now refers more cases for federal criminal prosecution than the FBI.

Nationwide, more than half of all federal criminal prosecutions initiated in fiscal year 2013 were for unlawfully crossing the border into the United States - an act that has traditionally been treated as a civil offense resulting in deportation, rather than as a criminal act resulting in incarceration in a federal prison.

This is dramatically changing who enters the federal prison system.

Read the full report here

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