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Articles on Incarceration rates

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In 2014, US Coast Guard vessels seized four tons of cocaine and other drugs in what was then considered a “big” bust. Seizures have continued to climb, only to be outstripped by production. Connie Terrell/US Coast Guard

International drug policy: at a crossroads or a dead-end?

Drug seizures are on the rise, but so too are production, consumption, trafficking and violence. The current drug control regime is showing its limits, yet the changes needed require consensus.
Black men disproportionately make up the US prison population. AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli

Biggest racial gap in prison is among violent offenders – focusing on intervention instead of incarceration could change the numbers

The US has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. When it comes to violent offenders and the Black community, the system isn’t working, argue criminologists.
Female prsioners wave goodbye to their fellow inmates following their release from Chikurubi prison on the outskirts of Harare in Zimbabwe in April 2021. Zimbabwe released about 3,000 prisoners due to COVID-19. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)

More than a million prisoners have been released during COVID-19, but it’s not enough

During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the world released many prisoners, but this has now slowed or stopped. Here’s why those releases should continue.
Calls for help at Chicago’s Cook County jail, where hundreds of inmates and staff have COVID-19, April 9, 2020. Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images

Prisons and jails are coronavirus epicenters – but they were once designed to prevent disease outbreaks

In the 1790s, penal reformers rebuilt America’s squalid jails as airy, hygienic places meant to keep residents – and by extension society – healthy. Now they’re hotbeds of COVID-19. What went wrong?
People gather in Edmonton during a rally in response to Gerald Stanley’s acquittal in the shooting death of Colten Boushie. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson

Broken system: Why is a quarter of Canada’s prison population Indigenous?

Colten Boushie’s death and the subsequent acquittal of his killer has fuelled loud calls for reforms to Canada’s criminal justice system and its treatment of the Indigenous. Why has it taken so long?
Notorious Holocaust denier Brian Ruhe gives a Nazi salute as alt-right protesters and anti-racism protesters take part in rallies in Vancouver in August. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Canadian social rights activists are legitimizing the alt-right

The backlash against the alt-right has ignited debates about free speech. But not all right-wing thought constitutes hate speech, and we need to identify the dividing line.

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