American Civil Liberties Union

The world got a glimpse this week into how the United States treats those we lock in solitary confinement, when the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights heard ACLU testimonies on how our treatment of vulnerable prisoners violates international human rights norms. The short story: we should be ashamed. For a more detailed picture, check back throughout the week for an ongoing blog series on the issue.

The United States has become a global outlier in its over-reliance on incarceration. Our soaring incarceration rates are, by now, a familiar statistic, expressed in any number of shocking formulas: the U.S. has less than 5 percent of the world’s population but over 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated people; the incarceration rate in the U.S. is four times the average for Western European countries; the U.S. incarcerates more people than South America, Central America and the Caribbean combined. In this era of mass incarceration, the racial disparities are staggering: one in four African-American children in the U.S. has grown up with a parent incarcerated.