Counting Casualties in the War on Prisoners

OVER THE LAST SEVERAL DECADES, numerous prisons in the United States have operated in a state of crisis.1 The sheer number of persons incarcerated during these years overwhelmed the capacity to safely and humanely house and administer to the prisoners placed under correctional control. Policies of mass incarceration that were pursued over these decades created drastic shortages of space and resources. Unwieldy numbers of prisoners were largely warehoused with little to do. Although some states took meaningful steps designed to address the causes of their overcrowding crisis, others—such as California—did not. As a result, prisoners have continued to be released back into many communities with a range of unmet needs and, in some instances, a host of serious problems that remained unaddressed