Greene County Democrat

Category: Crime

  • National Police Group apologizes for past racial injustices, but not current ones

    Julia Craven Reporter, The Huffington Post

    police-in-charlotte

    Police in riot gear walk outside Bank of America Stadium before a football game in Charlotte, North Carolina in September. Protests disrupted the city after an officer fatally shot Keith Lamont Scott, a 43-year-old black man.

    The president of the largest police organization in the country issued an apology on Monday to communities of color for the “historic mistreatment” they have suffered at the hands of law enforcement officers.

    Terrence Cunningham, the police chief of Wellesley, Massachusetts, delivered the apology during a speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police convention in San Diego. The IACP includes 23,000 police officials from across the United States, The Washington Post reports.

    “We must forge a path that allows us to move beyond our history and identify common solutions to better protect our communities,” Cunningham said. “For our part, the first step in this process is for law enforcement and the IACP to acknowledge and apologize for the actions of the past and the role that our profession has played in society’s historical mistreatment of communities of color.”

    “There have been times when law enforcement officers, because of the laws enacted by federal, state and local governments, have been the face of oppression for far too many of our fellow citizens,” he continued. “In the past, the laws adopted by our society have required police officers to perform many unpalatable tasks, such as ensuring legalized discrimination or even denying the basic rights of citizenship to many of our fellow Americans.” 1.

    Cunningham has a point. The relationship between law enforcement and communities of color has long been strained ― especially for African-Americans. Modern-day police forces grew out of slave patrols (at least in the South). During the height of the Jim Crow era, police officers were tasked with maintaining state-sanctioned racial oppression.

    “While this is no longer the case, this dark side of our shared history has created a multigenerational ― almost inherited ― mistrust between many communities of color and their law enforcement agencies,” Cunningham said.

    But racial discrimination in policing didn’t end with Jim Crow. Police officers are still required to enforce racially discriminatory laws ― such as SB 1070, an immigration law in Arizona that requires police to check the immigration status of anyone they think is in the country illegally. Or New York’s “stop and frisk” policy, which was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge in New York in 2013 for violating the Fourth Amendment rights of Black and Latino New Yorkers.

    As movements like Black Lives Matter note, people of color ― especially African-Americans ― are disproportionately killed, harassed and stopped by the police for mundane reasons. Because of this, trust toward the police is far lower in communities of color.

    Cunningham is certainly aware of this: He pointed to the high-profile police shootings of unarmed black people that have “tragically undermined the trust that the public must and should have in their police departments.”

    “Many officers who do not share this common heritage often struggle to comprehend the reasons behind this historic mistrust,” Cunningham said. “As a result, they are often unable to bridge this gap and connect with some segments of their communities.”

  • Ailing Obama health care act may have to change to survive

         By ROBERT PEAR, New York Times

    president-obama

    President Obama

    WASHINGTON — The fierce struggle to enact and carry out the Affordable Care Act was supposed to put an end to 75 years of fighting for a health care system to insure all Americans. Instead, the law’s troubles could make it just a way station on the road to another, more stable health care system, the shape of which could be determined on Election Day.

    Seeing a lack of competition in many of the health law’s online insurance marketplaces, Hillary Clinton, President Obama and much of the Democratic Party are calling for more government, not less.

    The departing president, the woman who seeks to replace him and nearly one-third of the Senate have endorsed a new government-sponsored health plan, the so-called public option, to give consumers an additional choice. A significant number of Democrats, for whom Senator Bernie Sanders spoke in the primaries, favor a single-payer arrangement, which could take the form of Medicare for all.

    Donald J. Trump and Republicans in Congress would go in the direction of less government, reducing federal regulation and requirements so insurance would cost less and no-frills options could proliferate. Mr. Trump would, for example, encourage greater use of health savings accounts, allow insurance policies to be purchased across state lines and let people take tax deductions for insurance premium payments.

    In such divergent proposals lies an emerging truth: Mr. Obama’s signature domestic achievement will almost certainly have to change to survive. The two parties agree that for too many people, health plans in the individual insurance market are still too expensive and inaccessible.

    “Employer markets are fairly stable, but the individual insurance market does not feel stable at all,” said Janet S. Trautwein, the chief executive of the National Association of Health Underwriters, which represents more than 100,000 agents and brokers who specialize in health insurance. “In many states, the individual market is in a shambles.”

    Mr. Obama himself, while boasting that 20 million people had gained coverage because of the law, acknowledged in July that “more work to reform the health care system is necessary.”

    “Too many Americans still strain to pay for their physician visits and prescriptions, cover their deductibles or pay their monthly insurance bills; struggle to navigate a complex, sometimes bewildering system; and remain uninsured,” Mr. Obama wrote in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

    The marketplace faces a major test in the fourth annual open enrollment season, which starts on Nov. 1, a week before Election Day. In many counties, consumers will see higher premiums and fewer insurers, as Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealth have curtailed their participation in the exchanges, and many of the nonprofit insurance cooperatives, created with federal money, have shut down.

    Mr. Trump has said that Congress must “completely repeal Obamacare,” and Republicans in Congress have repeatedly tried to do so. But parts of the law appear to be here to stay. One such provision, now widely accepted, says that insurers cannot deny coverage because of a person’s medical condition or history.

    For their part, many Democrats are clamoring for a public insurance option, as they did nine years ago.

    “Supporters of the public option warned that private insurance companies could not be trusted to provide reliable coverage or control costs,” said Richard J. Kirsch, who led a grass-roots organization that fought for passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and 2010. “The shrinking number of health insurers is proof that these warnings were spot on.”

    On Sept. 15, Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, introduced a resolution calling for a public option. The measure now has 32 co-sponsors, including the top Senate Democrats: Harry Reid of Nevada, Chuck Schumer of New York and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois.

    “You need competition to make the exchanges successful,” Mr. Merkley said in an interview. “A public option guarantees there’s competition in each and every exchange around the country.”

    As they did before the Affordable Care Act was enacted, insurance lobbyists are mobilizing to kill the public option. The main trade group for the industry, America’s Health Insurance Plans, says it would do nothing to stabilize the exchanges, and in an urgent “action alert,” the group asked member companies to lobby against Mr. Merkley’s resolution.

    Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the Senate health committee, said the Democrats’ public option plan would compound the problems it seeks to solve.

    “Obamacare exchanges are collapsing because of federal mandates and a lack of flexibility,” Mr. Alexander said. “We need to give states more flexibility and individuals more choices so more people can buy low-cost insurance.”

    Mr. Trump would replace the Affordable Care Act with an assortment of conservative policies, including some that are similar to ideas favored by House Republicans and by think tanks like the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute. But Democrats and some Republicans say that Mr. Trump has not laid out a comprehensive, coherent alternative to the Affordable Care Act.

    Mr. Trump would eliminate the requirement that most Americans carry health insurance. He would encourage the sale of insurance across state lines, in a bid to increase competition. And he would convert Medicaid, now an open-ended entitlement, into a block grant, giving each state a lump sum of federal money to provide health care to low-income people.

  • Eutaw City Council accepts bids on water project; disputes claims to pay Sheriff’s Department for setting up voting machines

    In its regular meeting on September 27, 2016, the Eutaw City Council approve bids for the proposed $3.1 million water improvement Project from USDA Rural Development.
    The Council approved two bids, one from Caldwell Tank Inc. of Louisville, Kentucky for $1,092,000 for replacement of the water tank behind City Hall; and a second bid from Apel Machine and Supply Company of Hanceville, Alabama for $1,557,344.92 for the replacement and extension of pipes, digital meters, fire hydrants and other improvements.
    Mayor Edwards said “The city is still negotiating the interim financing for this project and hope to have this completed soon so we can sign contracts with these low bidders so the water project can get started.” The Mayor also reported that work would begin within thirty days on the Prairie Avenue resurfacing project. S. T. Bunn was selected as the contractor for this project.
    The City Council was presented with an invoice for $6,000 for “delivery, set-up, technicians fee and pickup of electronic voting machines,” for the October 4th City runoff elections. The invoice specified that payment be made, prior to delivery of any equipment, to Jeremy Rancher or Charles Davis, who are on the staff of the Sheriff’s Department.
    Mayor Edwards explained that the same deputies had submitted a bill for $6,000 for the August 23 City elections and that she had paid $5,000 of that bill. The total request from deputies Rancher and Davis was $12,000 to provide the voting machines.
    Both the Mayor and Councilwoman Shelia Smith protested the high cost of the election arrangements and whether the Sheriff’s Department or individuals working for the Sheriff’s Department could legitimately charge for providing voting machines that belong to the County.
    After some discussion, new Probate Judge Judy Spree made the machines available to the City of Eutaw for the election and had members of the City police force transport and set up the machines. The Mayor is still disputing the original $5,000 payment and requesting a refund.
    In other business the City Council approved travel for council members and staff to various conferences and training events.

  • Sheriff files suit to enforce Settlement Agreement

    sheriff

    On September 30, 2016, just one day after the Greene County Commission finalized its budget for 2016-2017 fiscal year, the Greene County Sheriff Jonathan Benison, through his attorney Flint Liddon, filed a suit with the Greene County Circuit Court alleging that the Greene County Commission had “fulfilled essentially none of the terms of the Settlement Agreement and the Sheriff had fulfilled all of the terms of the Settlement Agreement.” The agreement referenced here is the settlement reached in February, 2016 between the commission and the sheriff in which the sheriff would provided additional bingo resources to the county and the commission would utilize a portion of those resources to support the sheriff’s department including providing some upgrades at the county jail.
    The Sheriff’s suit, among its attachments, lists the particulars of the February agreement including the provision that the Sheriff would provide to the county an additional $5 per bingo machine per month totaling $85 per machine from all the gaming facilities in the county. According to the Greene County Commission, the sheriff has not paid the additional $5 per bingo machine since the agreement was reached in February.
    In reviewing the entire agreement, it is apparent that the commission’s ability to meet the budget request of the Sheriff Department is contingent on the sheriff complying with the payments of the $85 per bingo machine to the commission.
    The sheriff’s suit asks the court to enforce the terms of the Settlement Agreement signed by both parties. The court’s enforcement would necessitate that the sheriff pay the county $85 per bingo machine per month from February 2016 through the county’s 2019 fiscal year from all gaming facilities in the county.

  • Sheriff reneges on agreement; Commission reduces sheriff’s budget request Greene Co. Commission approves fiscal year 2016-2017 budget

    The Greene County Commission, at an emergency meeting held Thursday, September 29, 2016, approved its fiscal year 2016-2017 budget, reducing the Sheriff Department’s allocations by $138,727.73. According to the commission, this amount represents the additional resources Greene County Sheriff Jonathan Benison agreed to provide to the commission from increased fees generated from Bingo machines. This agreement between the Greene County Commission and Sheriff Benison resulted from a directive of Circuit Court Judge James Moore at the December 15, 2015 hearing and provides that the sheriff will raise the fees on Bingo Machines at each facility in the county from $80 to $85 per month, beginning February 2016. To date, the additional $5 per machine has not been provided to the commission.
    The court agreement stated that the $85 per machine, collected by the sheriff for the commission, would be earmarked and allocated with 60% of the funds to be used for infrastructure projects and 40% for use by the commission to meet needs of the county general fund. The commission explained that part of the 40% would be allocated toward the sheriff’s budget, however, without the increase of $5 per machine, the county does not have sufficient income to meet the sheriff’s budget as requested.
    The commission reported that various communications have been sent to Sheriff Benison, requesting the agreed upon funds for the county and explaining the process that authorized the sheriff to impose and collect the additional $5 fee per Bingo machine. The commission reported there has been no response from Sheriff Benison in this regard.

  • Raymond Steele wins run-off for Mayor of Eutaw

    mayor-raymond-steeleRaymond Steele was elected Mayor of Eutaw in Tuesday’s run-off election by a vote of 718 (58.4%) to 511(41.6%) for Hattie Edwards the incumbent Mayor. Steele previously served three terms as Mayor of Eutaw from 2000 to 2012.
    Steele carried five of six voting boxes including decisive victories in Branch Heights and the Absentee Box (see chart of results on page 7 of this paper). The mayor’s race was the only one on the ballot while all City Council seats were determined in the August 23 primary election.
    There was little drop-off in the voting between the first election when 1,233 votes were cast and the run-off where 1,229 votes were cast, based on unofficial voter returns that will be confirmed on October 13, 2016.
    The new city officials will take office in November. Mayor Raymond Steele will be joined by City Council members: Latasha Johnson (District 1), LaJeffrey Carpenter (District 2), Shelia H. Smith (District 3), Joe Lee Powell (District 4) and Bennie Abrams (District 5).
    In an interview with the Democrat after his victory, Steele said:
    “I want to thank the citizens of Eutaw for their confidence in me. I look forward to working with the Eutaw City Council, other agencies and the citizens of the city to move Eutaw forward. I hope to continue with the proposed water improvement project. I want to encourage business and commercial development at the Interstate Exit 40 to bring jobs and raise our tax base.
    “I want to ask the City Council to unconditionally accept the roads and streets in Branch Heights, so that we can seek federal and state monies to fix these roads. I am open to hear the concerns of city residents and hope we can build a brighter future for our city.”
    Hattie Edwards said, “I thank my supporters for their support and believing in me.”
    The Democrat learned on Tuesday that incumbent Mayor Ollie Vester of Forkland postponed the municipal run-off election in that city despite instructions from the Alabama League of Municipalities to proceed with the election. Vester is disputing the results of the August 23 election and asked for a recount, however her request was filed beyond the deadline for such challenges.
    A special municipal election in Boligee is now scheduled for October 24.

  • Federal Judge who ended New York’s ‘Stop-And-Frisk Policy’ slams Trump’s idea to bring it back

    By: Cristian Farias Legal Affairs Reporter, The Huffington Post

     

    Shira A. Scheindlin
    In this courtroom drawing, Judge Shira A. Scheindlin listens to proceedings from the bench during the sentencing of arms Russian dealer Viktor Bout, Thursday, April 5, 2012, in New York. Scheindlin sentenced Bout to 25 years in prison on terrorism charges that grew from a U.S. sting operation. (AP Photo/Elizabeth Williams)

    Judge Shira Scheindlin, seen in a 2012 courtroom sketch, found “overwhelming proof” that stop-and-frisk practices discriminated against people of color. She wrote a 198 page ruling condemning the practice.

    NEW YORK ― Shira Scheindlin, the federal judge who ruled three years ago that the New York City Police Department’s aggressive stop-and-frisk practices were unconstitutional, had a few words about Donald Trump’s proposal to institute a similar policy nationwide.

    Trump’s idea sounded “so retrograde and so non-commonsensical,” she told The Huffington Post in an interview while on vacation. “You really wonder about this man’s level of knowledge,” added Scheindlin, who stepped down from the bench in May and is now of counsel at a New York law firm.

    At a town hall event on Wednesday, and in the first national debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump said he “would do stop and frisk” to address crime in black communities. He claimed that the tactic had “worked incredibly well” in New York ― evidently unaware of Scheindlin’s ruling that the way the NYPD did it actually amounted to racial profiling.

    “Why would you call for instituting a failed policy across the United States?” said Scheindlin.

    Trump also didn’t seem to grasp that as president he would have little power to micromanage policing, which is chiefly the states’ domain.

    Floyd v. City of New York was a long-running class action case charging that the NYPD’s practice of stopping, questioning and frisking thousands of New Yorkers without reasonable suspicion ― the vast majority of them black or Latino ― violated the Constitution. The 10-week trial in Scheindlin’s court offered dramatic testimony and thousands of exhibits.

    The judge then issued a 198-page ruling that served as a damning indictment of the city’s police department ― and then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg and then-NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly ― for targeting communities of color under a policy that did little to curb crime or violence.

    “The city’s highest officials have turned a blind eye to the evidence that officers are conducting stops in a racially discriminatory manner,” Scheindlin wrote. “In their zeal to defend a policy that they believe to be effective, they have willfully ignored overwhelming proof that the policy of targeting ‘the right people’ is racially discriminatory.”

    Thanks to that decision, the NYPD now has a court-ordered monitor to make sure that updated guidelines for police stops and initiatives such as body-worn cameras are being implemented responsibly and with input from community groups.

    Reflecting on her ruling today ― and Trump’s praise for what it condemned ― Scheindlin still maintains that stop-and-frisk tactics served “no law enforcement benefit” in New York and “did not reduce crime in any way.”

    As for the Republican presidential nominee’s unsupported notion that such a policy would somehow reduce gun violence by getting firearms off the streets, Scheindlin said the evidence collected in the Floyd trial told a very different story.

    “Very few guns were seized ― 1.5 percent of all the stops resulted in the seizure of any contraband, which is a very tiny number,” she said. “But on top of that, we have no idea if it deterred folks from carrying guns.”

    The more the judge pondered Trump’s proposal and how he might make it work ― could he, say, use the U.S. Department of Justice to condition federal funding on local police embracing stop and frisk? ― the more the exercise seemed like a fool’s errand. “I doubt that he thought it through to that extent,” she said.

  • Inmates strike in prisons nationwide over ‘slave labor’ working conditions

    By: Tom Kutsch, The Guardian

    national-prison-strike National Prison Strike graphic

    A nationwide prison strike over conditions and wages behind bars, which organizers tipped to be the biggest of its kind in US history, was under way in at least several correctional facilities across the country on Friday, according to prison rights advocates.

    Inmates from several states, who had bound together with the help of activists and organizing groups, aimed the national strikes – which had been in the making for several months – against what they said amounted to slave labor conditions amid mass incarceration in the country.

    The coordinated events, which organizers targeted in as many as 24 states, occurred on the 45th anniversary of the riots at Attica prison in New York – the largest prison uprising in American history – over grievances today’s protesters say are similar, including poor sanitary conditions and prison jobs that amount to forced labor.

    In April, one of the main national groups organizing the campaign, the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), under the banner of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union, announced its call to action.

    “This is a call for a nation-wide prisoner work stoppage to end prison slavery,” it said. “They cannot run these facilities without us.”

    “Work is good for anyone,” Melvin Ray, who is incarcerated at the WE Donaldson correctional facility in Bessemer, Alabama, told Mother Jones on Friday. “The problem is that our work is producing services that we’re being charged for, that we don’t get any compensation from.”

    Ray is a member of the group called the Free Alabama Movement, which has been instrumental in leading the strike efforts, along with other groups formed with the help of incarcerated individuals such as the Free Ohio Movement, the Free Mississippi Movement and the End Prison Slavery in Texas movement.

    According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, prisoners at federal facilities can make between 12 and 40 cents an hour for their work, while state prison rates can be higher or lower. In several states, including Texas and Arkansas, inmates are paid no wage for their labor.

    But the issue is not merely about earning meager amounts of money on the side. Inmates and outside organizers say that many US prisons simply would not run without the labor of inmates, including the work of building maintenance, cooking and cleaning.

    “These strikes are our method for challenging mass incarceration,” Kinetik Justice, a founder of the Free Alabama Movement, who serves at the Holman correctional facility in Alabama, told Democracy Now in May, during a prior 10-day strike which mirrors what he and others planned for Friday.

    Justice said that effort to push for a coordinated strikes came after “we understood that our incarceration was pretty much about our labor and the money that was being generated through the prison system”. He added that the prisoners, as a result, “began organizing around our labor and used it as a means and a method in order to bring about reform in the Alabama prison system”.

    A press release from the Free Alabama Movement said that a widespread strike at Holman correctional facility had been launched a minute after midnight on Friday. The Alabama department of corrections subsequently said that at least 45 inmates had gone on strike.

    The Free Alabama Movement also said also that strikes were under way at other prisons in Florida, South Carolina and Texas. It is difficult to get information from inside these prisons on the strike. Strike leaders are being placed in solitary confinement as punishment for striking and to disrupt the strike.

    An IWOC statement on Friday said the South Carolina prisoners who were striking had released a set of demands before they would return to work, including the end of “free labor”. The IWOC also said on Friday that inmates at the Fluvanna correctional center for women in Virginia had gone on strike.

    A report from the Miami Herald said that two prisons in the state had put their facilities on lockdown, a day after it reported that prison guards across the state were gearing up for possible strikes in conjunction with the national protests.

    The full scope of Friday’s planned protests, however, has not yet emerged. Strikes have happened at many prisons across the country over wages and conditions in the past several years.

    In 2013, one of the largest coordinated inmate resistance actions to date occurred when some 30,000 inmates across California went on hunger strike to protest at penal conditions, including a heavy reliance upon solitary confinement.

     

     

  • Anger grows in Tulsa as police release video of fatal shooting of unarmed black man

    By: Kristi Eaton and Jaweed Kaleem, Los Angeles Times

     

    tulsa-police-photoIn this photo from a Sept. 16 police video, Terence Crutcher, left, is followed by police in Tulsa, Okla., moments before an officer shot and killed him. (Tulsa Police Department)

    terrance-crutcher-with-his-sister-tiffany-crutcherTerrance Crutcher with his sister, Tiffany Crutcher

     

    A fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man by a white officer has reopened fresh wounds in this city with a fraught history among African Americans, white residents and police officers.

    A graphic police video shows Terence Crutcher, 40, being fatally shot by a police officer Friday night as he walks with his hands up toward his SUV, stalled out in the middle of the road.

    The incident quickly became the latest flashpoint in a string of controversial police shootings of Black Americans. Protesters chanted Tuesday evening in downtown Tulsa, the ACLU asked that criminal charges be filed against the officer, and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said news of the shooting was “unbearable.”

    “We have got to tackle systemic racism,” Clinton said on “The Steve Harvey Morning Show.” “This horrible shooting again. How many times do we have to see this in our country?”

    An attorney for Officer Betty Shelby, who shot Crutcher after responding to a dispatch call about an abandoned car, said Crutcher failed to heed police commands and that she and another officer, Tyler Turnbough, felt threatened and fired simultaneously. Turnbough used a stun gun.

    The city’s police chief, who released both helicopter and dash-cam video of the shooting, called the images “disturbing” and vowed to “achieve justice.”

    Protesters quickly demanded that Shelby to be fired, and the Crutcher family called for criminal charges against the officer, who has been put on routine administrative leave. The Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation and local authorities are independently investigating the shooting.

    The last night of life for Crutcher, a father of four who was on his way home from a class at Tulsa Community College, began with a pair of 911 calls reporting an abandoned car with its engine running and doors open in the middle of the road.

    “I got out and was like, ‘Do you need help?’ reported one caller, who said Crutcher “took off running” after asking her to “come here, come here,” and saying the car was going to “blow up.”

    “I think he’s smoking something,” the same caller said.

    Police videos show Crutcher walking toward his SUV with his hands up. Four officers, three male and one female, approach Crutcher he walks to the driver’s side and seems to lower his hands and put them on the car. The dash-cam video is blocked by officers, and Crutcher is partially blocked by his own car in the the helicopter video, making it difficult to see his movements. A man in the helicopter video suggests it’s “time for a Taser” before saying, “That looks like a bad dude, too. Probably on something.”

    Within seconds, Crutcher drops to the ground. “Shots fired!” a woman yells on police radio as officers slowly back away while holding their guns up. Officers wait more than two minutes before approaching Crutcher again.

    He was later pronounced dead at a local hospital.

    Police say the videos did not capture Shelby arriving on the scene because she did not turn her dash cam on.

    Shelby’s attorney, Scott Wood, says that when she showed up and asked Crutcher whether the car was his, he did not respond. Crutcher put his hands in his pockets as he walked toward her, then removed them and put his hands up before walking toward the back of her patrol car and putting his hands back in his pockets, Wood said.

    He said she planned to arrest Crutcher, who she thought was intoxicated, and called dispatch. Crutcher did not comply when Shelby took out her gun and told him to get on his knees, but instead walked toward his car, the attorney said.

    Wood said Shelby fired her gun at the same time that Turnbough fired a Taser at Crutcher because she had “tunnel vision” and did not realize other officers had arrived on scene.

    “When unarmed people of color break down on the side of the road, we’re not treated as citizens needing help. We’re treated as, I guess, criminals — suspects that they fear,” said Benjamin Crump, one of the attorneys representing the Crutcher family.

     

     

  • The full cost of incarceration in the U.S. is over $1 trillion, study finds

    By: Matt Ferner National Reporter, The Huffington Post

    A new study examining the economic toll of mass incarceration in the United States concludes that the full cost exceeds $1 trillion ― with about half of that burden falling on the families, children and communities of people who have been locked up.

    The United States is the biggest jailer on the planet, with less than 5 percent of the world’s population but nearly 25 percent of its prisoners. Another 7 million Americans are either on probation or on parole. Operating all those federal and state prisons, plus running local jails, is generally said to cost the U.S. government about $80 billion a year.

    But in a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis found that the $80 billion price tag is likely a gross underestimation, because it does not factor in the social costs of incarceration.

    “We find that for every dollar in corrections costs, incarceration generates an additional $10 in social costs,” Carrie Pettus-Davis, director of the university’s Concordance Institute for Advancing Social Justice and a co-author of the study, said last week.

    At $1 trillion, the broader costs of incarceration dwarf the operational costs of the U.S. government. And disturbingly, more than half of that cost, researchers say, is borne by the families, children and communities of incarcerated people.

    A growing body of research has established that formerly incarcerated people who get jobs tend to have significantly diminished incomes, even long after they leave prison. Researchers at Washington University found that incarcerated people lose about $70 billion in wages they would have otherwise earned as part of the workforce. And people who do find employment after incarceration miss out on an estimated $230 billion in reduced earnings over the course of their lifetime.

    “Formerly incarcerated persons earn lower wages because they face occupational restrictions, encounter discrimination in the hiring process, and have weaker social networks and less human capital due to their incarceration,” the researchers note.

    The formerly incarcerated also have a mortality rate 3.5 times higher than that of people who have never been incarcerated. Their shortened life spans collectively add a cost of almost $63 billion.

    But the single greatest cost the researchers found has to do with the fact that high levels of incarceration may actually increase crime, not deter it, by “reinforcing behavior and survival strategies that are maladaptive outside the prison environment.”

    The researchers note that there may be an additional destabilizing effect on communities where many people have been jailed, imprisoned or otherwise detained, thereby “weakening the social controls that bind neighborhoods together.”

    Altogether, researchers put those costs of the criminogenic nature of prison at a whopping $285 billion.

    The children of incarcerated people pay enormous costs. They are five times more likely to go to prison than their peers. They’re likely to be stigmatized and suffer long-term emotional and behavioral challenges. They also have a greater chance of living in poverty or general instability at home or becoming homeless themselves.

    Ten percent of children of incarcerated parents are unable to finish high school or attend college. Many teenage children of incarcerated parents forego their education and enter the labor force early in order to make up for lost family income. And incarcerated people have triple the divorce rate of people who are convicted of a crime but not placed behind bars. Altogether, costs involving the children of the incarcerated reach over $185 billion.

    In the researchers’ estimation, the full economic burden of mass incarceration in the U.S. comes to about 6 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. It’s also over 11 times larger than the operational costs of correctional facilities.

    “Recent reports highlighting the costs to incarcerated persons, families, and communities have made it possible to estimate the true cost of incarceration,” Pettus-Davis said. “This is important because it suggests that the true cost has been grossly underestimated, perhaps resulting in a level of incarceration beyond that which is socially optimal.”