Mandatory Teenager Life Sentences and Other Prison Matters

I. Teenager Life Sentences
The Supreme Court rulings that took place between 2010 and 2016, have banned mandatory life-without-parole for teenagers, giving thousands of juvenile lifers around the country the chance of release. At the time of the rulings, more than 70 percent of juvenile lifers were people of color, with most being African Americans. [1]

The number of states banning life without parole for children in all cases, not just in mandatory sentencing schemes have more than quadrupled to 21 since 2012. About 1,700 of the 2,800 locked up have been resentenced, and 400,  one in seven, have been freed.

According to Samantha Michaels's study, published in Mother Jones, adolescents who experience the highest rates of trauma are 100 times more likely to commit murder than the general population.

II. Hell's Kitchen
Prisoners are 6.4 more likely to be sickened from spoiled or contaminated food than people on the outside, as determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Prison food can damage prisoners' long-term wellness. According to an analysis by the Prison Policy Institute, after staffing, health care is the public prison system's largest expense, setting government agencies back $12.3 billion a year.

III. Private Prisons
128K - People incarcerated in private prisons in the United States in 2016, or about 8.5 percent of the total US prison population.

120% - Increase in the use of private prisons since 2000.

73% - Immigrant detainees held in privately owned facilities.

$4.16B - Combined 2018 revenue of the GEO Group and CoreCivic, the two largest private-prison companies.

$135K - Amount that the private-prison industry contributed to the Democratic Party in the 2018 election cycle.

$1.1M - Amount that the industry contributed to the Republican Party in the 2018 election cycle. [2]

ADDENDUMS:
*There are more than 3,000 jails in the United States. According to a study released in 2017 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, nearly half the people held in jail suffer from some kind of mental disorder.

*The rate of parole approvals across five field offices dropped from 92 percent between 2011 and 2013 to less than 4 percent between February and September 2017, even though the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that oversees ICE, claimed its parole policy had not changed. [3]

*A second federal judge has blocked a citizenship question from appearing on the 2020 Census.

*The Mueller probe cost $25 million through last fall. Trump's 21 visits to Mar-a-Lago have cost well over $60 million. Trump has earned $400,000 in revenue.

*The New American Economy group says in New York, 80 percent of limo and taxi drivers are immigrants, while in California, more than 75 percent of agricultural workers are immigrants.

*Trump has tweeted that "Airplanes are becoming too complex to fly." He had taken credit for 2017 being the safest year on record in commercial aviation.

Footnotes:
[1] Samantha Michaels, "Life After Life," Mother Jones, March/April 2019.

[2] Noah Flora, "By the Numbers," The Nation, April 15, 2019.

[3] Noah Savard, "Get in Line," Mother Jones, March/April 2019.