When compared to the founding countries of NATO, Mississippi has the highest incarceration rate in the world. That figure was determined by the Prison Policy Initiative, a non-profit group researching the effects of community supervision on the formerly incarcerated. Typically in the form of probation or parole, community correction often requires those in the system to pay recurring fees and remain in the same location for the duration of the sentence.
Leah Wang, an analyst at PPI, authored the report and says it’s concerning to see Mississippi continue to rise in their rankings after the last report was conducted in 2018.
“Probation and parole could be utilized well for people leaving prison or facing a possible sentence, but instead we find that probation and parole often set people up to fail because they have simply too many conditions being put on people,” said Wang. “They are just high stakes rules that people have to follow, and violating those rules can result in incarceration.”
Mississippi's probation and parole population, when combined, more than doubles the state's total prison population. Wang says that indicates a heavy reliance on community supervision, and those systems often feature a multitude of strict, hard-to-navigate rules that quickly lead people back to prison in a cyclical fashion.
“What we’re told is that these are lenient approaches to punishing people, but we find that they’re sort of insidiously designed to trap people and put conditions on their lives that make it almost impossible to get back on their feet, let alone to thrive in their communities,” said Wang.
Since 1978, both Mississippi's pre-trial and overall prison population has grown by more than 300%, according to the report.
