In his 2000 book “The America We Deserve,” future President Donald J. Trump argued that “we don’t have too many people in prison. Quite the contrary.” Trump added, “The next time you hear someone saying there are too many people in prison, ask them how many thugs they’re willing to relocate to their neighborhood. The answer: none.”

Trump’s framing—which reflects the “tough-on-crime” rhetoric that characterized the 1980s and ’90s for Republicans and Democrats alike—has a strong emotional appeal. Specifically, it appeals to our worst fears regarding threats to our safety and that of our families and to our desire to see justice served. It’s also a framing that has provided the political justification for the racial profiling, militarized policing, and harsh sentencing that have together contributed to the rise of mass incarceration. The United States incarcerates more people (both in raw numbers, and as a proportion of the population) than any other nation in the world for whom we have data, despite the national incarceration rate being at its lowest level in 20 years. At year-end 2019, there were 6.34 million people under supervision in the U.S. adult correctional system, including people incarcerated in state or federal prison or local jail and those supervised in the community on probation or parole. Figure 1 shows the 10 nations with the highest prison population rates.

Read the full article about unjust incarceration by Anthony Barr and Kristen Broady at Brookings.