Skip to content
Politics & Current Affairs

Invisible Prisons

“Incarceration in America is a failure by almost any measure. But what if the prisons could be turned inside out, with convicts released into society under constant electronic surveillance?”
Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

“By almost any metric, our practice of locking large numbers of people behind bars has proved at best ineffective and at worst a national disgrace. According to a recent Pew report, 2.3 million Americans are currently incarcerated—enough people to fill the city of Houston.” The Atlantic reports on new electronic gear allowing convicts to live outside prisons while being monitored electronically by authorities. “Not only might such a system save billions of dollars annually, it could theoretically produce far better outcomes, training convicts to become law-abiders rather than more-ruthless lawbreakers.”

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Related

Up Next
“America’s ‘combat mission’ in Iraq may be over, but the combat is not.” The New Yorker on the lives, strategy and moral clarity that has been lost during the occupation of Iraq.