Mass unemployment feeds mass incarceration. About one-third of all prisoners were unemployed at the time of their arrests, and others averaged less than $20,000 annual incomes in the year prior to their incarceration. When the Attica prison insurrection occurred in upstate New York in 1971, there were only 12,500 prisoners in New York Stateìs correctional facilities, and about 300,000 prisoners nationwide. By 2001, New York State held over 71,000 women and men in its prisons; nationally, 2.1 million were imprisoned. Today about five to six million Americans are arrested annually, and roughly one in five Americans possess a criminal record.
Mass unemployment feeds mass incarceration. About one-third of all prisoners were unemployed at the t…
Manning Marable
Manning Marable is Professor of History and Political Science, and the Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University. He is co-founder of the Black Radical Congress, a national network of African-American activists. He is the author of 13 books, most recently Black Leadership (NY: Columbia Univ. Press. 1998).