by Kevin Schofield

This weekend’s read is a stunning report on what’s happening to incarceration rates in the United States, written by researchers at the State University of New York and the University of Wisconsin. From 1972 to 2009, America saw a “prison boom”: The number of individuals incarcerated increased by more than 700%. And the prison boom dramatically and disproportionately affected Black men: 22% of Black men born between 1965 and 1969 served time in prison by age 35, and in 2003, an estimated 1 in 3 Black men born in 2001 could expect to serve time in prison over their lifetime (compared with 1 in 17 white men).