Bigger Than Incarceration: Mass Criminalization, Mental Health & Drug War
How structural violence and the dehumanization of black and brown people are deeply embedded within the fabric of society.
As previously reported by The Root, black inmates who identify as transgender women are sexually assaulted at alarming rates, with approximately 32 percent being raped in jail after being placed in male populations.
Additionally, male and female inmates with disabilities and/or psychological issues are also more likely to be sexually violated.
According to a 2014 Vera Institute report, “On Life Support: Public Health in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” the prevalence of serious mental illness is two to four times higher in state prisons than in the general public. And two-thirds of inmates have a substance-abuse problem, compared with approximately 9 percent of the general public.
These troubling statistics go hand in hand with the anxiety, depression, substance abuse and poverty too often experienced by fractured families coping with the absence of loved ones, children, mothers and fathers, who have been targeted through overpolicing, mass incarceration and mass criminalization.
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