Why America Throws the Poor in Prison

America built mass incarceration: the wholesale imprisonment of entire populations. Why, exactly, are so many people in prison – more than the entire population of New Mexico? That’s our focus for this week’s video: how a crisis of capitalism created a surplus population of former workers concentrated in declining cities, and how politicians and capitalists – instead of helping those people, and building a better and more just economy – built a prison system larger than any other in the history of the world to warehouse them. Chase Madar, professor of law at NYU Gallatin, explains.

Sources: https://rb.gy/ngorgz

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0:00 Mass Incarceration in America
1:39 The Crisis of the '60s and '70s
2:49 How America Built Mass Incarceration
5:07 What About When Crime Fell?
7:24 Credits