AMERICA:THE NEWS that more than one in 100 American adults are now behind bars has been greeted by general hand-wringing, with presidential candidate Hillary Clinton describing the statistic as heartbreaking.
"To state it plainly, the one-in-100 figure represents a failure of our society at a number of levels. And the cost - to our families, to our communities, and to state budgets to the tune of almost $50 billion - are simply too great to bear," she said.
The cost is borne disproportionately by poor and minority communities, with a staggering one-in-nine African-American men between 20 and 34 currently locked up. The explosion in prison numbers over the past 30 years doesn't reflect a surge in crime, nor has it been accompanied by a significant improvement in public safety.
Instead, the race to incarcerate has been driven by changes in sentencing policy and the public appetite for harsh punishment at any cost. Since the mid-1980s when the "broken window" of crime prevention encouraged authorities to clamp down on even the slightest infringements, many states have introduced ever tougher measures, including "three strikes" rules that lock up for years offenders who have committed multiple, non-violent crimes.
Many of those who are overcrowding America's prisons are there for violating their parole terms, sometimes simply by being in the wrong place or talking to the wrong people. More than half of those released from US prisons each year are back behind bars within three years, either for a new crime or for violating the terms of their release.
The human cost of warehousing more than 2.3 million people - (China and Russia are next in the world rankings, locking up 1.5 million and 890,000 respectively) - is enormous, especially for the black community. One in 14 African-American children has a parent who is incarcerated and the removal of so many men from the community has helped to undermine family structures and entrench poverty.
The cost to taxpayers is hefty too, however, and some states spend more on prisons than on higher education. Nationally, spending on prisons has increased by 127 per cent in real terms over the past 30 years, while spending on higher education has grown by 21 per cent.
With tax increases now a taboo in most US states, the cost of keeping so many people behind bars is presenting state governments with a growing headache and may be damaging the health of the prisoners themselves.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) this week filed a class-action suit against the governor of Nevada and other state officials, alleging that they have failed to rectify "a pervasive pattern of grossly inadequate medical care" at the state's maximum security prison in Ely.
A Los Angeles Times investigation last year described how prisoners at Ely had been denied care for heart problems, diabetes and other serious medical conditions. A nurse at the prison was fired after complaining about substandard care, which she said led to one inmate needlessly dying of gangrene.
Max Carter, the prison's physician assistant, denied one inmate's request for pills to ease pain from his deteriorating joints last July, stating that he was "gonna let you suffer", according to internal prison records.
"These deprivations are so extreme that they subject all the men confined there to constant significant risk of serious injury, medical harm premature death," the ACLU suit says.
There are signs of a change in attitude in some states, however, led by Texas, which has the biggest prison population in the US after a 300 per cent increase in prisoner numbers since 1985.
Last year, state legislators from both parties decided that, instead of spending $523 million on new prison cells, they would attempt to reform the entire corrections system. They approved a massive expansion of drug treatment and drug courts and broad changes to the parole system so that violations of release terms are punished more often by non-custodial sanctions.
Texas expects the reforms to save the state $210 million over the next two years and a further $233 million if the recidivism rate drops.
"It's always been safer politically to build the next prison, rather than stop and see whether that's really the smartest thing to do," said state senator John Whitmire of Houston, chairman of the senate's criminal justice committee. "But we're at a point where I don't think we can afford to do that anymore."
