Reformers Say U.S. Mass Incarceration Spares None, Including White Americans

Racial demographics are changing in jails and prisons exposing the error in seeing mass incarceration as a “Black problem.”

Virus Outbreak Prisoner Vaccines
Carrie Shipp shows a photo of her incarcerated 21-year-old son Matthew Shipp that she keeps on her cell phone Friday, April 2, 2021. LM Otero / ASSOCIATED PRESS
Virus Outbreak Prisoner Vaccines
Carrie Shipp shows a photo of her incarcerated 21-year-old son Matthew Shipp that she keeps on her cell phone Friday, April 2, 2021. LM Otero / ASSOCIATED PRESS

Reformers Say U.S. Mass Incarceration Spares None, Including White Americans

Racial demographics are changing in jails and prisons exposing the error in seeing mass incarceration as a “Black problem.”

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White populations in U.S. jails have jumped significantly in recent years, while Black and Latino populations have steadily declined. Some experts say that these trends might sway white Americans to rethink the shared costs of the nation’s incarceration system.

Reset brings on two legal experts who co-authored a recent piece on the topic to discuss these trends and what they might mean for reformers looking to end mass incarceration.

GUESTS: Ekow Yankah, professor at Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University

Keith Humphreys, professor of psychiatry at Stanford University; drug policy advisor in the Bush and Obama administrations