Science has published a new prison study that establishes imprisonment behaves like an infectious disease and is contagious.
Our country leads the world in incarceration and we need a new paradigm. If we are going to save out society we need to look at changing our attitudes and fund new treatments for crime.
Incarceration in the United States is frequently described as an epidemic, with per capita rates nearly quadrupling in the past 30 years. African-Americans appear to be particularly susceptible: In 2011, they were six times more likely than whites to be incarcerated, making up 38% of the 1.6 million Americans behind bars while accounting for only 13% of the U.S. population. Now, a computer simulation originally developed to track infectious disease suggests the longer prison sentences that blacks often receive may accelerate the rate of “infection.”
