Prisons again: British prisons are a disgrace, too.

Two recent shocking reports into jails in Nottingham and Liverpool show that conditions remain Dickensian – inmates crammed into filthy, freezing cells; cockroaches; rats; extensive violence. Whether you measure it by the high levels of re-offending or the number of suicides, it’s clear the system is failing; yet we keep locking more and more people …

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Too many Americans in prison

According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2,220,300 adults were incarcerated in US federal and state prisons, and county jails in 2013 – about 1 in 110 of the U.S. resident population. Additionally, 4,751,400 adults in 2013 (1 in 51) were on probation or on parole. For-profit companies were responsible for approximately 7 percent …

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