Criminal justice reform has become a refuge for bipartisanship in an era of tense political rivalries. Despite widespread polarization on other issues, Democrats and Republicans tend to agree on one fundamental truth—high incarceration rates in the United States create unnecessary human and fiscal costs for all communities. As a result, criminal justice reform movements have developed at local, state, and federal levels of government. These efforts have largely focused on de-incarceration initiatives, such as changes to bail and sentencing policies, that aim to divert people away from the justice sys-tem and toward community services, treatment, and productive citizenship. Even as government leaders attempt to depopulate the nation's correctional facilities, however, 2.3 million people remain incarcerated, while many more cycle in and out of jails almost 11 million times each year.1 Moreover, as a nation, the United States claims the highest incarceration rate in the world, locking up its citizens at a rate of 698 per 100,000.2
These troubling figures raise several important questions that are often overlooked:
What do conditions of confinement in the United States actually look like, and how are people treated behind bars?
What is being done to ensure that these conditions and the treatment of prisoners are humane?
How can we make our prisons and jails more transparent?