Source: theconversation.com 4/2/25
The U.S. operates one of the largest and most punitive criminal justice systems in the world. On any given day, 1.9 million people are incarcerated in more than 6,000 federal, state and local facilities. Another 3.7 million remain under what scholars call “correctional control” through probation or parole supervision.
That means one out of every 60 Americans is entangled in the system — one of the highest rates globally.
Yet despite its vast reach, the criminal justice system often fails at its most basic goal: preventing people from being rearrested, reconvicted or reincarcerated. Criminal justice experts call this “recidivism.” About 68% of people who leave prison in any given year are rearrested within three years, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
It’s certainly easy to blame individuals for getting rearrested or reincarcerated. But if you take a closer look at life after release – which often includes employment discrimination, housing barriers and exclusion from basic social services – recidivism seems less like a personal failure, I would argue, and more the workings of a broken system.
As a sociologist, I know that people are rarely given a “second chance” after conviction. Instead, they must navigate a web of legally imposed restrictions. Roughly 19 million people in the U.S. have a felony record, subjecting them to thousands of “collateral consequences,” in the words of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. These restrictions dictate everything from what jobs they can take to where they can live.