Not Another Second — alaric jordan beal

Not Another Second: Re-Entry from Incarceration in Midcoast Maine

In Collaboration with Scott Beal & Nelson Keyser

The American criminal justice system holds almost 2 million people in 1,566 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,850 local jails, 1,510 juvenile correction facilities, 186 immigration detention facilities, 82 Indian Country jails, as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in U.S. territories.

In a typical year, about 600,000 people enter prison gates, but people go to jail over 10 million times each year.

Over 555,000 people are locked up who haven’t been convicted or sentenced (pretrial detention)

The median bail amount for felonies is $10,000

The criminal justice system punishes poverty…Poverty is not only a predictor of incarceration; it is also frequently the outcome, as a criminal record and time spent in prison destroys wealth, creates debt, and decimates job opportunities

1 in 5 incarcerated people is locked up for a drug offense

400,000 are incarcerated for drug offenses on any given day

Black Americans make up 38% of the incarcerated population despite representing only 12% of U.S. residents

People who are incarcerated are only a fraction of those impacted by the criminal justice system

822,000 people are on parole

2.9 million people are on probation

79 million people have a criminal record

113 million adults have an immediate family member who has been to prison or jail

Statistics and text from Prison Policy Initiative’s, Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022

“Thus, the prison is present in our lives and, at the same time, it is absent from our lives. To think about this simultaneous presence and absence is to begin to acknowledge the part played by ideology in shaping the way we interact with our social surroundings. We take prisons for granted but are often afraid to face the realities they produce.”

“rather than try to imagine one single alternative to the existing system of incarceration, we might envision an array of alternatives, that will require radical transformations of many aspects of our society.”

Angela Davis, from Are Prisons Obsolete?