In 1972, about 200,000 people were held in US state and federal prisons. Today nearly 2 million people are locked up in prisons, jails, immigration detention and juvenile facilities, according to the Prison Policy Initiative's 2025 report. The US incarcerates more people than any other country.
This growth was a policy choice. The War on Drugs and mandatory minimum sentences drove it. So did the 1986 crack cocaine law, with its 100 to 1 sentencing disparity, along with three strikes laws and the 1994 federal crime bill. Cash bail keeps many people in jail who have not been convicted.
The burden falls unevenly. Black Americans are imprisoned in state prisons at nearly five times the rate of white Americans, according to The Sentencing Project. Incarceration also removes voting rights, blocks jobs and housing and separates families. Michelle Alexander's 2010 book "The New Jim Crow" argued that mass incarceration works as a system of racial control.