Over the past 40 years, the United States has increased the number of incarcerated citizens by over 500 percent to 2.2 million people — the largest prison population in the world. This increase, referred to widely as mass incarceration, has not affected all communities equally. People who are poor and people of color are more likely to be arrested, convicted and harshly sentenced. Consider these statistics from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI):

• The U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population but nearly 25 percent of its incarcerated population.
• Our spending on jails and prisons reached $87 billion in 2015, an increase of 1000 percent from the $7.4 billion spent in 1975.
• From 1980 to 2017, the number of women in jails and prisons in the US grew 750 percent. More than 225,000 women are incarcerated today.

Ending Mass Incarceration writes, “In no area of American society are the legacies of slavery and racism more evident than in the criminal legal system. Despite making up only 12 percent of the U.S. population, Black people make up 50 percent of the country’s prison population.”

According to the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), Black individuals represented 14% of Westchester’s population, yet made up 45% of the arrests and 49% of the prison sentences in 2020.