According to the World Prison Brief, the United States has over two million people in jail or in prison. By either total population, or per capita, the U.S. leads the world in depriving people of their liberty, with incarceration rates higher than Rwanda, Turkmenistan and El Salvador. Meanwhile, international organizations such as Human Rights Watch have deplored conditions in U.S. prisons, citing mistreatment, vermin infestations, punitive disciplinary actions and more. To make matters worse, there is little concrete evidence that mass incarceration has a significant impact on violent crime. All this has many questioning whether prisons should exist at all. Tommie Shelby is the Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard University, and the author of “The Idea of Prison Abolition.”
