Half of US adults have immediate family member who has been in prison, report finds
- American prisons are four times larger than 1980 and the US continues to incarcerate more people than any other country in the world, the report said
Nearly half of all American adults have an immediate family member who has experienced incarceration, according to a study published on Thursday that spotlights the extent of mass imprisonment in the United States.
The report came after President Donald Trump gave his backing to a bipartisan bill aimed at reforming sentences imposed for drug offences, a move that could reduce the prison population after years of spiralling growth.
The study by Cornell University and lobbying group FWD.us found that around 45 per cent of American adults – about 113 million people – have an immediate family member who has been incarcerated for at least one night in jail or prison.
It was based on online and phone surveys conducted on a nationally representative sample of 4,041 adults in the summer of 2018.
One in seven US adults has an immediate family member who has been in prison for at least one year, and one in 34 adults has had an immediate family member imprisoned for 10 years or longer.
