The one thing about governments that can be said for a certainty is that they absolutely love statistics and therefore they keep track of all sorts of stats, not so much to do something constructive about such, where this is most needed, but rather as simply a means to keep a good tally of how that society is doing. Regarding poverty in America, census.gov tells us that 37.9 million people in America were part of the official poverty rate in 2022. However, that number of people does not count any of the estimated 1.23 million people who were incarcerated in prisons, of which, the overwhelming majority of those prisoners were either in poverty before their incarceration or because there is typically no reasonable means to make a decent wage in prison, they are in poverty while in prison, signifying that an additional 1.23 million peoples are effectively in poverty as well, though not counted as such, by the United States Census Bureau.
It doesn’t take a sagacious person to understand that to a meaningful extent, those who are in poverty are the very same who are going to have a strong inclination to commit crimes, because those who are without fair opportunity and hope, aren’t going to be vested into being a good citizen. This would seem to strongly imply that a reduction in those who are currently in poverty, would help to reduce the number of people committing crimes and therefore would diminish the number of people being incarcerated, which a sensible person, would surely be in favor of supporting.
Indeed, to somehow believe that crime is arbitrary and that those who are locked up consist of a fair reflection of the income and assets categories of this nation, is woefully inaccurate. In fact, it is those who are the least amongst us, in the sense of having fair access to the desired accouterments that help make life good, who are overrepresented in our prison population, because they do not have, what they so desire to have, and because they do not believe that there is a legit way to gain access to such, take it upon themselves, to take shortcuts to get what they so desire, which is bad for society, and when violence or coercion is used, even worse.
So too, as they say, idle hands are the devil’s workshop, which reflects that because incarceration is not cost-free in America, and thus costs the American people a considerable sum of money, for the expressed purpose of getting certain people off of the streets, that it would therefore behoove this nation, to come up with sensible work programs, that would not only provide income to those that most need it, but also would permit this nation to do something constructive about the infrastructure which is in disrepair all over this country. After all, the fact of the matter is that those who work, especially at a living wage, are always going to be less inclined to commit crime, because they are busy and occupied with the work that they are so doing and getting paid for, of which, the more that any segment of this population can buy into the belief that America is truly the land of the free, the brave, and of hope, the better it will be for society, at large.