title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The national suspension rate doubled from 3.7% to 7.4% from 1973 to 2010. The claim that Zero Tolerance Policies affect students of color at a disproportionate rate is supported in the Code of Maryland Regulations study, that found black students were suspended at more than double the rate of white students. This data is further backed by Moriah Balingit, who states that when compared to white students, black students are suspended and expelled at greater rates according to the Civil Rights Data Collection, that has records with specific information for the 2015–2016 school year of about 96,000 schools. In addition, further data shows that although black students only accounted for 15% of the student population, they represented a 31% of the arrests. Hispanic children share this in common with their black counterparts, as they too are more susceptible to harsher discipline like suspension and expulsion. This trend can be seen throughout numerous studies of this type of material and particularly in the south. Furthermore, between 1985 and 1989, there was an increase in referrals of minority youth to juvenile court, petitioned cases, adjudicated delinquency cases, and delinquency cases placed outside the home. During this time period, the number of African American youth detained increased by 9% and the number of Hispanic youths detained increased by 4%, yet the proportion of White youth declined by 13%. Documentation of this phenomenon can be seen as early as 1975 with the book "School Suspensions: Are they helping children?" Additionally, as punitive action leads to dropout rates, so does imprisonment. Data shows in the year 2000, one in three black male students ages 20–40 who did not complete high school were incarcerated. Moreover, about 70% of those in state prison have not finished high school. Lastly, if one is a black male living post-Civil Rights Movement with no high school diploma, there is a 60% chance that they will be incarcerated in their lifetime.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The United States government holds tens of thousands of immigrants in detention under the control of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). These immigrants seek asylum into the United states and are detained prior to release into the United States or deportation and removal from the country. During 2018, 396,448 people were booked into ICE custody: 242,778 of whom were detained by CBP and 153,670 by ICE's own enforcement operations.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The BOP receives all prisoner transfer treaty inmates sent from foreign countries, even if their crimes would have been, if committed in the United States, tried in state, DC, or territorial courts. Non-US citizens incarcerated in federal and state prisons are eligible to be transferred to their home countries if they qualify.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In some, but not all, states' department of corrections, inmates reside in different facilities that vary by security level, especially in security measures, administration of inmates, type of housing, and weapons and tactics used by corrections officers. The federal government's Bureau of Prisons uses a numbered scale from one to five to represent the security level. Level five is the most secure, while level one is the least. State prison systems operate similar systems. California, for example, classifies its facilities from Reception Center through Levels I to V (minimum to maximum security) to specialized high security units (all considered Level V) including Security Housing Unit (SHU)—California's version of supermax—and related units. As a general rule, county jails, detention centers, and reception centers, where new commitments are first held while either awaiting trial or before being transferred to "mainline" institutions to serve out their sentences, operate at a relatively high level of security, usually close security or higher.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Supermax prison facilities provide the highest level of prison security. These units hold those considered the most dangerous inmates, as well as inmates that have been deemed too high-profile or too great a national security risk for a normal prison. These include inmates who have committed assaults, murders, or other serious violations in less secure facilities, and inmates known to be or accused of being prison gang members. Most states have either a supermax section of a prison facility or an entire prison facility designated as a supermax. The United States Federal Bureau of Prisons operates a federal supermax, A.D.X. Florence, located in Florence, Colorado, also known as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies" and is widely considered to be perhaps the most secure prison in the United States. A.D.X. Florence has a standard supermax section where assaultive, violent, and gang-related inmates are kept under normal supermax conditions of 23-hour confinement and abridged amenities. A.D.X. Florence is considered to be of a security level above that of all other prisons in the United States, at least in the "ideological" ultramax part of it, which features permanent, 24-hour solitary confinement with rare human contacts or opportunity to earn better conditions through good behavior.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In a maximum security prison or area (called high security in the federal system), all prisoners have individual cells with sliding doors controlled from a secure remote control station. Prisoners are allowed out of their cells one out of twenty four hours (one hour and 30 minutes for prisoners in California). When out of their cells, prisoners remain in the cell block or an exterior cage. Movement out of the cell block or "pod" is tightly restricted using restraints and escorts by correctional officers.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Under close security, prisoners usually have one- or two-person cells operated from a remote control station. Each cell has its own toilet and sink. Inmates may leave their cells for work assignments or correctional programs and otherwise may be allowed in a common area in the cellblock or an exercise yard. The fences are generally double fences with watchtowers housing armed guards, plus often a third, lethal-current electric fence in the middle.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Prisoners that fall into the medium security group may sleep in cells, but share them two and two, and use bunk beds with lockers to store their possessions. Depending upon the facility, each cell may have showers, toilets and sinks. Cells are locked at night with one or more correctional officers supervising. There is less supervision over the internal movements of prisoners. The perimeter is generally double fenced and regularly patrolled.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Prisoners in minimum security facilities are considered to pose little physical risk to the public and are mainly non-violent "white collar criminals". Minimum security prisoners live in less-secure dormitories, which are regularly patrolled by correctional officers. As in medium security facilities, they have communal showers, toilets, and sinks. A minimum-security facility generally has a single fence that is watched, but not patrolled, by armed guards. At facilities in very remote and rural areas, there may be no fence at all. Prisoners may often work on community projects, such as roadside litter cleanup with the state department of transportation or wilderness conservation. Many minimum security facilities are small camps located in or near military bases, larger prisons (outside the security perimeter) or other government institutions to provide a convenient supply of convict labor to the institution. Many states allow persons in minimum-security facilities access to the Internet.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Inmates who maintain contact with family and friends in the outside world are less likely to be convicted of further crimes and usually have an easier reintegration period back into society. Inmates benefit from corresponding with friends and family members, especially when in-person visits are infrequent. However, guidelines exist as to what constitutes acceptable mail, and these policies are strictly enforced.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Mail sent to inmates in violation of prison policies can result in sanctions such as loss of imprisonment time reduced for good behavior. Most Department of Corrections websites provide detailed information regarding mail policies. These rules can even vary within a single prison depending on which part of the prison an inmate is housed. For example, death row and maximum security inmates are usually under stricter mail guidelines for security reasons.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: There have been several notable challenges to prison corresponding services. The Missouri Department of Corrections (DOC) stated that effective June 1, 2007, inmates would be prohibited from using pen pal websites, citing concerns that inmates were using them to solicit money and defraud the public. Service providers such as WriteAPrisoner.com, together with the ACLU, planned to challenge the ban in Federal Court. Similar bans on an inmate's rights or a website's right to post such information has been ruled unconstitutional in other courts, citing First Amendment freedoms. Some faith-based initiatives promote the positive effects of correspondence on inmates, and some have made efforts to help ex-offenders reintegrate into society through job placement assistance. Inmates' ability to mail letters to other inmates has been limited by the courts.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch claims that prisoners and detainees face "abusive, degrading and dangerous" conditions within local, state and federal facilities, including those operated by for-profit contractors. The organization also raised concerns with prisoner rape and medical care for inmates. In a survey of 1,788 male inmates in Midwestern prisons by "Prison Journal", about 21% responded they had been coerced or pressured into sexual activity during their incarceration, and 7% that they had been raped in their current facility.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In August 2003, a "Harper's" article by Wil S. Hylton estimated that "somewhere between 20 and 40% of American prisoners are, at this very moment, infected with hepatitis C". Prisons may outsource medical care to private companies such as Correctional Medical Services (now Corizon) that, according to Hylton's research, try to minimize the amount of care given to prisoners in order to maximize profits. After the privatization of healthcare in Arizona's prisons, medical spending fell by 30 million dollars and staffing was greatly reduced. Some 50 prisoners died in custody in the first 8 months of 2013, compared to 37 for the preceding two years combined.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The poor quality of food provided to inmates has become an issue, as over the last decade corrections officials looking to cut costs have been outsourcing food services to private, for-profit corporations such as Aramark, A'Viands Food & Services Management, and ABL Management. A prison riot in Kentucky has been blamed on the low quality of food Aramark provided to inmates. A 2017 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that because of lapses in food safety, prison inmates are 6.4 times more likely to contract a food-related illness than the general population.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Also identified as an issue within the prison system is gang violence, because many gang members retain their gang identity and affiliations when imprisoned. Segregation of identified gang members from the general population of inmates, with different gangs being housed in separate units often results in the imprisonment of these gang members with their friends and criminal cohorts. Some feel this has the effect of turning prisons into "institutions of higher criminal learning".


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Many prisons in the United States are overcrowded. For example, California's 33 prisons have a total capacity of 100,000, but they hold 170,000 inmates. Many prisons in California and around the country are forced to turn old gymnasiums and classrooms into huge bunkhouses for inmates. They do this by placing hundreds of bunk beds next to one another, in these gyms, without any type of barriers to keep inmates separated. In California, the inadequate security engendered by this situation, coupled with insufficient staffing levels, have led to increased violence and a prison health system that causes one death a week. This situation has led the courts to order California to release 27% of the current prison population, citing the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. The three-judge court considering requests by the "Plata v. Schwarzenegger" and "Coleman v. Schwarzenegger" courts found California's prisons have become criminogenic as a result of prison overcrowding.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court case of "Cutter v. Wilkinson" established that prisons that received federal funds could not deny prisoners accommodations necessary for religious practices.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: According to a Supreme Court ruling issued on May 23, 2011, California — which has the highest overcrowding rate of any prison system in the country — must alleviate overcrowding in the state's prisons, reducing the prisoner population by 30,000 over the next two years.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Solitary confinement is widely used in US prisons, yet it is underreported by most states, while some do not report it at all. Isolation of prisoners has been condemned by the UN in 2011 as a form of torture. At over 80,000 at any given time, the US has more prisoners confined in isolation than any other country in the world. In Louisiana, with 843 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, there have been prisoners, such as the Angola Three, held for as long as forty years in isolation.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In 1999, the Supreme Court of Norway refused to extradite American hashish-smuggler Henry Hendricksen, as they declared that US prisons do not meet their minimum humanitarian standards.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In 2011, some 885 people died while being held in local jails (not in prisons after being convicted of a crime and sentenced) throughout the United States. According to federal statistics, roughly 4,400 inmates die in US prisons and jails annually, excluding executions.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: As of September 2013, condoms for prisoners are only available in the U.S. State of Vermont (on September 17, 2013, the California Senate approved a bill for condom distribution inside the state's prisons, but the bill was not yet law at the time of approval) and in county jails in San Francisco.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In September 2016, a group of corrections officers at Holman Correctional Facility have gone on strike over safety concerns and overcrowding. Prisoners refer to the facility as a "slaughterhouse" as stabbings are a routine occurrence.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) requested health data from 54 state and territorial health department jurisdictions. 32 (86%) of 37 jurisdictions that responded reported at least one confirmed COVID-19 case among inmates or staff members. As of April 21, 2020, there were 4,893 cases and 88 deaths among inmates and 2,778 cases and 15 deaths among staff members.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The conditions for women, especially Black women, are often poor. Many prisons are known to do less in order to help Black women get out of the prison system. Because prisons are male dominated, a larger portion of the resources are allocated towards them. Another major issue that women face in prisons is sexual assault, which often comes from guards. Though this is a major issue for women, these types of assaults do not usually get the attention that they need, and the victims are often left not being taken care of.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Based on Angela Davis' "Are Prisons Obsolete?", the prison industrial complex and mass incarceration is shaped by gender. There are significant differences in the treatment of imprisoned men and women. Women endure physical, mental, and emotional trauma as they are forced to endure sexual abuse and a lack of resources for their intimate needs. In prison, women are dehumanized and treated like objects in a way that has become normal. Like many other socio-political issues, women seem to be left out of the conversation when it comes to prison reform. Again, not many people consider the experiences that women have endured in their time of imprisonment. Women were degraded to an extreme extent, and sexual abuse was often brought on by the guards and officers who are supposed to watch over them. They are sexualized, and often sent to prison for a longer duration than men.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The petty crimes of women are also not met with the same intensity of murder charges for men. According to Davis, "masculine criminality has always been deemed more "normal" than feminine criminality" (Davis, 2011). When a woman commits a crime, it is not as common and so it is practically considered psychotic. Because of this, "deviant women have been constructed as insane" (Davis, 2011). Women are treated as if their crimes are more irrational because of their gender, and their sentencing can be harsher as a result. Women are even more inclined to be imprisoned in psychiatric hospitals than men, and prescribed psychiatric treatment.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Prior to the 1980s, private prisons did not exist in the U.S. During the 1980s, as a result of the War on Drugs by the Reagan Administration, the number of people incarcerated rose. This created a demand for more prison space. The result was the development of privatization and the for-profit prison industry.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The prison-industrial complex (PIC) refers to the use of prison in addressing economic, political, and social issues; the PIC benefits heavily those who maintain ethos and power through racial and other privileges. The prison-industrial complex is a term that identifies a network of institutions that extend outward toward the political economy and loops back to the mandatory minimum sentences for possession of small quantities of illegal substances implemented by jails and prisons. Private prisons profit from contractual agreements with a government agency that pays them a monthly rate either for each prisoner or for each space available. The mass incarceration of African-Americans during the era of the "War on Drugs" plays less to the detriments of drug abuse and plays more to the accumulation of income in the pockets of the rich by merely incriminating black people in large quantities for possession of drugs found mostly in impoverished neighborhoods. By implementing mandatory minimum sentences for these offenses, private interest is maintained while the black community is left devastated.While the pockets of the rich broaden, the lives of prison inmates—and African-American families nationwide—are left to suffer as a result of private interest. This cycle has affected many in the African-American community.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: A 1998 study was performed using three comparable Louisiana medium security prisons, two of which were privately run by different corporations and one of which was publicly run. The data from this study suggested that the privately run prisons operated more cost-effectively without sacrificing the safety of inmates and staff. The study concluded that both privately run prisons had a lower cost per inmate, a lower rate of critical incidents, a safer environment for employees and inmates, and a higher proportional rate of inmates who completed basic education, literacy, and vocational training courses. However, the publicly run prison outperformed the privately run prisons in areas such as experiencing fewer escape attempts, controlling substance abuse through testing, offering a wider range of educational and vocational courses, and providing a broader range of treatment, recreation, social services, and rehabilitative services.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: According to Marie Gottschalk, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, studies that claim private prisons are cheaper to run than public prisons fail to "take into account the fundamental differences between private and public facilities," and that the prison industry "engages in a lot of cherry-picking and cost-shifting to maintain the illusion that the private sector does it better for less." The American Civil Liberties Union reported in 2013 that numerous studies indicate private jails are actually filthier, more violent, less accountable, and possibly more costly than their public counterparts. The ACLU stated that the for-profit prison industry is "a major contributor to bloated state budgets and mass incarceration – not a part of any viable solution to these urgent problems." The primary reason Louisiana is the prison capital of the world is because of the for-profit prison industry. According to "The Times-Picayune", "a majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt."


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In Mississippi, a 2013 "Bloomberg report" stated that assault rates in private facilities were three times higher on average than in their public counterparts. In 2012, the for-profit Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility was the most violent prison in the state with 27 assaults per 100 offenders. A federal lawsuit filed by the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of prisoners at the privately run East Mississippi Correctional Facility in 2013 claims the conditions there are "hyper-violent", "barbaric" and "chaotic", with gangs routinely beating and exploiting mentally ill inmates who are denied medical care by prison staff. A May 2012 riot in the Corrections Corporation of America-run Adams County Correctional Facility, also in Mississippi, left one corrections officer dead and dozens injured. Similar riots have occurred in privatized facilities in Idaho, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Florida, California and Texas.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Sociologist John L. Campbell of Dartmouth College claims that private prisons in the U.S. have become "a lucrative business". Between 1990 and 2000, the number of private facilities grew from five to 100, operated by nearly 20 private firms. Over the same time period the stock price of the industry leader, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which rebranded as CoreCivic in 2016 amid increased scrutiny of the private prison industry, climbed from $8 a share to $30. According to journalist Matt Taibbi, major investors in the prison industry include Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Fidelity Investments, General Electric and The Vanguard Group. The aforementioned "Bloomberg report" also notes that in the past decade the number of inmates in for-profit prisons throughout the U.S. rose 44 percent.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Controversy has surrounded the privatization of prisons with the exposure of the genesis of the landmark Arizona SB 1070 law. This law was written by Arizona State Congressman Russell Pearce and the CCA at a meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C. Both CCA and GEO Group, the two largest operators of private facilities, have been contributors to ALEC, which lobbies for policies that would increase incarceration, such as three-strike laws and "truth-in-sentencing" legislation. In fact, in the early 1990s, when CCA was co-chair of ALEC, it co-sponsored (with the National Rifle Association) the so-called "truth-in-sentencing" and "three-strikes-you're-out" laws. Truth-in-sentencing called for all violent offenders to serve 85 percent of their sentences before being eligible for release; three strikes called for mandatory life imprisonment for a third felony conviction. Some prison officers unions in publicly run facilities such as California Correctional Peace Officers Association have, in the past, also supported measures such as three-strike laws. Such laws increased the prison population.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In addition to CCA and GEO Group, companies operating in the private prison business include Management and Training Corporation, and Community Education Centers. The GEO Group was formerly known as the Wackenhut Corrections division. It includes the former Correctional Services Corporation and Cornell Companies, which were purchased by GEO in 2005 and 2010. Such companies often sign contracts with states obliging them to fill prison beds or reimburse them for those that go unused.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Private companies which provide services to prisons combine in the American Correctional Association, a 501(c)3 which advocates legislation favorable to the industry. Such private companies comprise what has been termed the prison–industrial complex. An example of this phenomenon would be the Kids for cash scandal, in which two judges in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, were receiving judicial kickbacks for sending youths, convicted of minor crimes, to a privatized, for-profit juvenile facility run by the Mid Atlantic Youth Service Corporation.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The industry is aware of what reduced crime rates could mean to their bottom line. This from the CCA's SEC report in 2010:


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Marie Gottschalk claims that while private prison companies and other economic interests were not the primary drivers of mass incarceration originally, they do much to sustain it today. The private prison industry has successfully lobbied for changes that increase the profit of their employers. They have opposed measures that would bring reduced sentencing or shorter prison terms. The private prison industry has been accused of being at least partly responsible for America's high rates of incarceration.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: According to The Corrections Yearbook, 2000, the average annual starting salary for public corrections officers was $23,002, compared to


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: $17,628 for private prison guards. The poor pay is a likely factor in the high turnover rate in private prisons, at 52.2 percent compared to 16 percent in public facilities.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In September 2015, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the "Justice Is Not for Sale" Act, which would prohibit the United States government at federal, state and local levels from contracting with private firms to provide and/or operate detention facilities within two years.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: An August 2016 report by the U.S. Department of Justice asserts that privately operated federal facilities are less safe, less secure and more punitive than other federal prisons. Shortly after this report was published, the DoJ announced it will stop using private prisons. On February 23, the DOJ under Attorney General Jeff Sessions overturned the ban on using private prisons. According to Sessions, "the (Obama administration) memorandum changed long-standing policy and practice, and impaired the bureau's ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system. Therefore, I direct the bureau to return to its previous approach." The private prison industry has been booming under the Trump Administration.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Additionally, both CCA and GEO Group have been expanding into the immigrant detention market. Although the combined revenues of CCA and GEO Group were about $4 billion in 2017 from private prison contracts, their number one customer was ICE.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: About 18% of eligible prisoners held in federal prisons are employed by UNICOR and are paid less than $1.25 an hour. Prisons have gradually become a source of low-wage labor for corporations seeking to outsource work to inmates. Corporations that utilize prison labor include Walmart, Eddie Bauer, Victoria's Secret, Microsoft, Starbucks, McDonald's, Nintendo, Chevron Corporation, Bank of America, Koch Industries, Boeing and Costco Wholesale.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: It is estimated that one in nine state government employees works in corrections. As the overall U.S. prison population declined in 2010, states are closing prisons. For instance, Virginia has removed 11 prisons since 2009. Like other small towns, Boydton in Virginia has to contend with unemployment woes resulting from the closure of the Mecklenburg Correctional Center.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In September 2016, large, coordinated prison strikes took place in 11 states, with inmates claiming they are subjected to poor sanitary conditions and jobs that amount to forced labor and modern day slavery. Organizers, which include the Industrial Workers of the World labor union, assert it is the largest prison strike in U.S. history.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Starting August 21, 2018, another prison strike, sponsored by Jailhouse Lawyers Speak and the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, took place in 17 states from coast to coast to protest what inmates regard as unfair treatment by the criminal justice system. In particular, inmates objected to being excluded from the 13th amendment which forces them to work for pennies a day, a condition they assert is tantamount to "modern-day slavery". The strike was the result of a call to action after a deadly riot occurred at Lee Correctional Institution in April of that year, which was sparked by neglect and inhumane living conditions.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: According to a 2022 report by the ACLU, prison labor produces $11 billion worth of goods and services annually, with inmates often being forced to work dangerous jobs with no labor protections and little training, and are compensated with pennies per hour or sometimes nothing at all.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Judicial, police, and corrections costs totaled $212 billion in 2011 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2007, around $74 billion was spent on corrections according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Despite federal statistics including statements made by former Attorney General Eric Holder, according to research on corrections expenditure published in the ▲Church white paper "On Security", Federal Prisons and Detention FY15 Requested Budget was just $8.5 billion.<ref name="▲Church2014/12">White Paper on Security Fact Sheet. December 1, 2014. Retrieved October 16, 2020. "▲Church Publishing."</ref> Federal Bureau of Prisons' spending was $6.9 billion counting 20,911 correctional officers of 43,297 positions.<ref name="2013/12/21/bop">Federal Prison System Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) FY 2015 Budget Request At A Glance. December 21, 2013. Retrieved September 2014. "The United States Department of Justice."</ref> Total U.S. States' and Federal Prisons and Detention including county jail subsidies was only $56.9 billion. Adding local jails' spending, $64.9 billion was spent on corrections in nominal 2014 dollars.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In 2014, among facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the average cost of incarceration for federal inmates in fiscal year 2014 was $30,619.85. The average annual cost to confine an inmate in a residential re-entry center was $28,999.25.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: State prisons averaged $31,286 per inmate in 2010 according to a Vera Institute of Justice study. It ranged from $14,603 in Kentucky to $60,076 in New York.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In California in 2008, it cost the state an average of $47,102 a year to incarcerate an inmate in a state prison. From 2001 to 2009, the average annual cost increased by about $19,500.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Housing the approximately 500,000 people in jail in the US awaiting trial who cannot afford bail costs $9 billion a year. Most jail inmates are petty, nonviolent offenders. Twenty years ago most nonviolent defendants were released on their own recognizance (trusted to show up at trial). Now most are given bail, and most pay a bail bondsman to afford it. 62% of local jail inmates are awaiting trial. This rate varies from state to state. As of 2019, Illinois has the highest rate with 89% of inmates in local jails unconvicted.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: To ease jail overcrowding over 10 counties every year consider building new jails. As an example Lubbock County, Texas has decided to build a $110 million megajail to ease jail overcrowding. Jail costs an average of $60 a day nationally. In Broward County, Florida supervised pretrial release costs about $7 a day per person while jail costs $115 a day. The jail system costs a quarter of every county tax dollar in Broward County, and is the single largest expense to the county taxpayer.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The National Association of State Budget Officers reports: "In fiscal 2009, corrections spending represented 3.4 percent of total state spending and 7.2 percent of general fund spending." They also report: "Some states exclude certain items when reporting corrections expenditures. Twenty-one states wholly or partially excluded juvenile delinquency counseling from their corrections figures and fifteen states wholly or partially excluded spending on juvenile institutions. Seventeen states wholly or partially excluded spending on drug abuse rehabilitation centers and forty-one states wholly or partially excluded spending on institutions for the criminally insane. Twenty-two states wholly or partially excluded aid to local governments for jails. For details, see Table 36."


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: According to a 2016 study by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, the true cost of incarceration exceeds $1 trillion, with half of that falling on the families, children and communities of those incarcerated.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: According to a 2016 analysis of federal data by the U.S. Education Department, state and local spending on incarceration has grown three times as much as spending on public education since 1980.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Three articles written in the early 2000s claim that increasing incarceration has a negative effect on crime, but this effect becomes smaller as the incarceration rate increases. Higher rates of prison admissions increase crime rates, whereas moderate rates of prison admissions decrease crime. The rate of prisoner releases in a given year in a community is also positively related to that community's crime rate the following year.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: A 2010 study of panel data from 1978 to 2003 indicated that the crime-reducing effects of increasing incarceration are totally offset by the crime-increasing effects of prisoner re-entry.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: According to a 2015 study by the Brennan Center for Justice, falling crime rates cannot be ascribed to mass incarceration.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Within three years of being released, 67% of ex-prisoners are re-arrested, and 52% are re-incarcerated, according to a study based on 1994 data. Former inmate Wenona Thompson argues "I realized that I became part of a cycle, a system, that looked forward to seeing me there. And I was aware that ... I would be one of those people who fill up their prisons".


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In 1995, the government allocated $5.1 billion for new prison space. Every $100 million spent in construction costs $53 million per year in finance and operational costs over the next three decades. Taxpayers spend $60 billion a year for prisons. In 2005, it cost an average of $23,876 a year to house a prisoner. It takes about $30,000 per year per person to provide drug rehabilitation treatment to inmates. By contrast, the cost of drug rehabilitation treatment outside of a prison costs about $8,000 per year per person.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The effects of such high incarceration rates are also shown in other ways. Many people convicted of felonies lose their right to vote either temporarily or, in some cases, permanently. Currently, over 6 million Americans are disenfranchised for this reason. In addition, people who have been recently released from prison are ineligible for welfare in most states. They are not eligible for subsidized housing, and for Section 8 they have to wait two years before they can apply. In addition to finding housing, they also have to find employment, but this can be difficult as employers often check for a potential employees criminal record. Essentially, a person who has been recently released from prison comes into a society that is not prepared structurally or emotionally to welcome them back.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In "The New Jim Crow" in 2011, legal scholar and advocate Michelle Alexander contended that the U.S. incarceration system worked to bar Black men from voting. She wrote "there are more African Americans under correctional control – in prison or jail, on probation or parole – than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began". Alexander's work has drawn increased attention in the years since.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Yale Law Professor, and opponent of mass incarceration James Forman Jr. has countered that 1) African Americans, as represented by such cities as the District of Columbia, have generally supported tough on crime policies. 2) There appears to be a connection between drugs and violent crimes, the discussion of which, he says, New Jim Crow theorists have avoided. 3) New theorists have overlooked class as a factor in incarceration. Black people with advanced degrees have fewer convictions. Black people without advanced education have more.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Incarceration of an individual does not have a singular effect: it affects those in the individual's tight-knit circle as well. For every mother that is incarcerated in the United States there are about another ten people (children, grandparents, community, etc.) that are directly affected.  Moreover, more than 2.7 million children in the United States have an incarcerated parent. That translates to one out of every 27 children in the United States having an incarcerated parent. Approximately 80 percent of women who go to jail each year are mothers. This ripple effect on the individual's family amplifies the debilitating effect that entails arresting individuals. Given the general vulnerability and naivete of children, it is important to understand how such a traumatic event adversely affects children. The effects of a parent's incarceration on their children have been found as early as three years old. Local and state governments in the United States have recognized these harmful effects and have attempted to address them through public policy solutions.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The effects of an early traumatic experience of a child can be categorized into health effects and behavioral externalizations. Many studies have searched for a correlation between witnessing a parent's arrest and a wide variety of physiological issues. For example, Lee et al. showed significant correlation between high cholesterol, migraines, and HIV/AIDS diagnosis to children with a parental incarceration.  Even while adjusting for various socioeconomic and racial factors, children with an incarcerated parent have a significantly higher chance of developing a wide variety of physical problems such as obesity, asthma, and developmental delays.  The current literature acknowledges that there are a variety of poor health outcomes as a direct result of being separated from a parent by law enforcement.  It is hypothesized that the chronic stress that results directly from the uncertainty of the parent's legal status is the primary influence for the extensive list of acute and chronic conditions that could develop later in life.  In addition to the chronic stress, the immediate instability in a child's life deprives them of certain essentials e.g. money for food and parental love that are compulsory for leading a healthy life. Though most of the adverse effects that result from parental incarceration are regardless of whether the mother or father was arrested, some differences have been discovered. For example, males whose father have been incarcerated display more behavioral issues than any other combination of parent/child.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: There has also been a substantial effort to understand how this traumatic experience manifests in the child's mental health and to identify externalizations that may be helpful for a diagnosis. The most prominent mental health outcomes in these children are anxiety disorders, depression (mood), and post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD). These problems worsen in a typical positive feedback loop without the presence of a parental figure. Given the chronic nature of these diseases, they can be detected and observed at distinct points in a child's development, allowing for ample research. Murray et al. have been able to isolate the cause of the expression of Anti-social behaviours specific to the parental incarceration.  In a specific case study in Boston by Sack, within two months of the father being arrested, the adolescent boy in the family developed severe aggressive and antisocial behaviors.  This observation is not unique; Sack and other researchers have noticed an immediate and strong reaction to sudden departures from family structure norms. These behavioral externalizations are most evident at school when the child interacts with peers and adults. This behavior leads to punishment and less focus on education, which has obvious consequences for future educational and career prospects.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In addition to externalizing undesirable behaviors, children of incarcerated parents are more likely to be incarcerated compared to those without incarcerated parents. More formally, transmission of severe emotional strain on a parent negatively impacts the children by disrupting the home environment. Societal stigma against individuals, specifically parents, who are incarcerated is passed down to their children. The children find this stigma to be overwhelming and it negatively impacts their short- and long-term prospects.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: With rising levels of mass incarceration, the prison population faces significant health issues while incarcerated. Health surveys of inmates show that the prison population faces higher rates of chronic and infectious diseases, mental illness, and substance use disorders than the general U.S. population. Based on analysis of the 2002-4 Survey of Inmates in Local Jails, incarcerated individuals had higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, myocardial infarction, asthma, arthritis, cervical cancer, and hepatitis. The prison environment exacerbates chronic health conditions since they cannot be properly addressed and due to the stress of social isolation. In addition, low-income and POC populations are often more susceptible to poor health outcomes due to social determinants of health prior to incarceration such as poor nutrition, lower average levels of education, higher levels of community violence and drug use, and lower rates of healthcare access.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The incarcerated population also has lower rates of health literacy. A 2016 study found that over 60% of patients had inadequate health literacy in a sample of formerly incarcerated individuals. According to the Health Resources & Services Administration, health literacy is the ability to obtain, process, and understand health information in order to make appropriate health decisions. In the incarcerated population, low health literacy is linked with decreased confidence in taking medications, increased likelihood of emergency department visits, and difficulty self-managing chronic health conditions.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: There are four main phases that can be distinguished in the process of arresting a parent: arrest, sentencing, incarceration, and re-entry. Re-entry is not relevant if a parent is not arrested for other crimes. During each of these phases, solutions can be implemented that mitigate the harm placed on the children during the process. While their parents are away, children rely on other caretakers (family or friends) to satisfy their basic need. Solutions for the children of incarcerated parents have identified caretakers as a focal point for successful intervention.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: One in five children witness their parent arrested by authorities, and a study interviewing 30 children reported that the children experienced flashbulb memories and nightmares associated with the day their parent was arrested. These single, adverse moments have long-reaching effects and policymakers around the country have attempted to ameliorate the situation. For example, the city of San Francisco in 2005 implemented training policies for its police officers with the goal of making them more cognizant of the familial situation before entering the home. The guidelines go a step further and stipulate that if no information is available before the arrest, that officers ask the suspect about the possibility of any children in the house. San Francisco is not alone: New Mexico passed a law in 2009 advocating for child safety during parental arrest and California provides funding to agencies to train personnel how to appropriately conduct an arrest in the presence of family members. Extending past the state level, the Department of Justice has provided guidelines for police officers around the country to better accommodate for children in difficult family situations.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: During the sentencing phase, the judge is the primary authority in determining the appropriate punishment. Consideration of the sentencing effects on the defendant's children could help with the preservation of the parent-child relationship. A law passed in Oklahoma in 2014 requires judges to inquire if convicted individuals are single custodial parents, and if so, to authorize the mobility of important resources so the child's transition to different circumstances is monitored. The distance that the jail or prison is from the arrested individual's home is a contributing factor to the parent-child relationship. Allowing a parent to serve their sentence closer to their residence allows for easier visitation and a healthier relationship. Recognizing this, the New York Senate passed a bill in 2015 that would ensure convicted individuals be jailed in the nearest facility.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In 1771, Baron Auckland wrote in "Principles of Penal Law" that: "Imprisonment, inflicted by law as a punishment, is not according to the principles of wise legislation. It sinks useful subjects into burdens on the community, and has always a bad effect on their morals: nor can it communicate the benefit of example, being in its nature secluded from the eye of the people."


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: While serving a sentence, measures have been put in place to allow parents to exercise their duty as role models and caretakers. New York State allows newborns to be with their mothers for up to one year. Studies have shown that parental, specifically maternal, presence during a newborn's early development are crucial to both physical and cognitive development. Ohio law requires nursery support for pregnant inmates in its facilities. California also has a stake in the support of incarcerated parents, too, through its requirement that women in jail with children be transferred to a community facility that can provide pediatric care. These regulations are supported by the research on early child development that argue it is imperative that infants and young children are with a parental figure, preferably the mother, to ensure proper development. This approach received support at the federal level when then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates instituted several family-friendly measures, for certain facilities, including: improving infrastructure for video conferencing and informing inmates on how to contact their children if they were placed in the foster care system, among other improvements.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The last phase of the incarceration process is re-entry back into the community, but more importantly, back into the family structure. Though the time away is painful for the family, it does not always welcome back the previously incarcerated individual with open arms. Not only is the transition into the family difficult, but also into society as they are faced with establishing secure housing, insurance, and a new job.  As such, policymakers find it necessary to ease the transition of an incarcerated individual to the pre-arrest situation. Of the four outlined phases, re-entry is the least emphasized from a public policy perspective. This is not to say it is the least important, however, as there are concerns that time in a correctional facility can deteriorate the caretaking ability of some prisoners. As a result, Oklahoma has taken measurable strides by providing parents with the tools they need to re-enter their families, including classes on parenting skills.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Though the effects on caregivers of these children vary based on factors such as the relationship to the prisoner and his or her support system, it is well known that it is a financial and emotional burden to take care of a child. In addition to taking care of their nuclear family, caregivers are now responsible for another individual who requires attention and resources to flourish. Depending on the relationship to the caregiver, the transition to a new household may not be easy for the child. The rationale behind targeting caregivers for intervention policies is to ensure the new environment for the children is healthy and productive. The federal government funds states to provide counseling to caretaking family members to alleviate some of the associated emotional burden. A more comprehensive program from Washington (state) employs "kinship navigators" to address caretakers' needs with initiatives such as parental classes and connections to legal services.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Felony records greatly influence the chances of people finding employment. Many employers seem to use criminal history as a screening mechanism without attempting to probe deeper. They are often more interested in incarceration as a measure of employability and trustworthiness instead of its relation to any specific job. People who have felony records have a harder time finding a job. The psychological effects of incarceration can also impede an ex-felon's search for employment. Prison can cause social anxiety, distrust, and other psychological issues that negatively affect a person's reintegration into an employment setting. Men who are unemployed are more likely to participate in crime which leads to there being a 67% chance of ex-felons being charged again. In 2008, the difficulties male ex-felons in the United States had finding employment lead to approximately a 1.6% decrease in the employment rate alone. This is a loss of between $57 and $65 billion of output to the US economy.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Although incarceration in general has a huge effect on employment, the effects become even more pronounced when looking at race. Devah Pager performed a study in 2003 and found that white males with no criminal record had a 34% chance of callback compared to 17% for white males with a criminal record. Black males with no criminal record were called back at a rate of 14% while the rate dropped to 5% for those with a criminal record. Black men with no criminal background have a harder time finding employment than white men who have a history of criminal activity. While having a criminal record decreases the chance of a callback for white men by 50%, it decreases the callback chances for Black men by 64%.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: While Pager's study is greatly informative, it does lack some valuable information. Pager only studied white and Black men, which leaves out women and people of other races. It also fails to account for the fact that applying for jobs has largely shifted from applying in person to applying over the Internet. A study done by Scott H. Decker, Cassia Spohn, Natalie R. Ortiz, and Eric Hedberg from Arizona State University in 2014 accounts for this missing information. This study was set up similarly to the Pager study, but with the addition of female job applicants, Hispanic job applicants, and online job applications. Men and women of white, Black, and Hispanic ethnicities account for 92% of the US prison population.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The results of Arizona State University study were somewhat different from Pager's study, but the main finding was expected: Incarceration decreased the chances of getting employed. For females submitting applications online and in-person, regardless of criminal history, white women received the most callbacks, roughly 40%. Hispanic women followed up with a 34% callback rate. Black women had the lowest rate at 27%. The effects of incarceration on female applicants in general were that females with a prison record were less likely to receive a callback compared to females without a prison record. The significant exceptions are white women applying in person and Hispanic women with a community college degree applying online.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: For males submitting applications online and in-person, regardless of criminal history, Hispanic males received the most callbacks, roughly 38%. White males followed up with a 35% callback rate. Black males had the lowest rate at 27%. The effects of incarceration on male applicants applying in-person was that males with a prison record were less likely than males without a prison record to receive a callback. However, the effects of incarceration on male applicants applying online were nearly nonexistent. In fact, the study found that "there was no effect of race/ethnicity, prison record, or community college [education] on men's success in advancing through the [online] hiring process". The Arizona State University study also had results that contradicted Pager's study. It found that white males with a prison record did not have a higher callback rate than Black males (and Hispanic males) without a prison record. Hispanic men without a prison record had a 40% higher callback rate than white males with a prison record, and Black men without a prison record had a 6% higher callback rate than white men without a prison record. Given that there is an 11-year gap between these studies, this discrepancy may be due to the social and demographic changes over time, rather than flaws in Pager's study.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Effects of other types of incarceration, such as shorter stays in local county jails, can also affect employment at both the individual and macro level. At the community level, for example, jail incarceration has been found to diminish local labor markets, especially in areas with relatively high proportions of Black residents.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: High rates of incarceration may be due to sentence length, which is further driven by many other factors. Shorter sentences may even diminish the criminal culture by possibly reducing re-arrest rates for first-time convicts. The U.S. Congress has ordered federal judges to make imprisonment decisions "recognizing that imprisonment is not an appropriate means of promoting correction and rehabilitation."


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Critics have lambasted the United States for incarcerating a large number of non-violent and victimless offenders; half of all persons incarcerated under state jurisdiction are for non-violent offenses, and 20% are incarcerated for drug offenses (in state prisons; federal prison percentages are higher). "Human Rights Watch believes the extraordinary rate of incarceration in the United States wreaks havoc on individuals, families and communities, and saps the strength of the nation as a whole." The population of inmates housed in prisons and jails in the United States exceeds 2 million, with the per capita incarceration population higher than that officially reported by any other country. Criminal justice policy in the United States has also been criticized for a number of other reasons. In the 2014 book "," journalist Matt Taibbi argues that the expanding disparity of wealth and the increasing criminalization of those in poverty have culminated in the U.S. having the largest prison population "in the history of human civilization". The scholars Michael Meranze and Marie Gottschalk contend that the massive "carceral state" extends far beyond prisons, and distorts democracy, degrades society, and obstructs meaningful discourse on criminal punishment. A December 2017 report by Philip Alston, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, asserted that the justice system throughout the U.S. is designed to keep people mired in poverty and to generate revenue to fund the justice system and other governmental programs. More recently, scholars have argued that a system of mass incarceration necessarily interferes with a free society "characterized by industry, discovery, and creation."


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Some scholars have linked the ascent of neoliberal, free market ideology in the late 1970s to mass incarceration. Sociologist Loïc Wacquant postulates the expansive prison system has become a political institution designed to deal with an urban crisis created by welfare state retrenchment and economic deregulation, and that this "overgrown and intrusive penal state" is "deeply injurious to the ideals of democratic citizenship." Academic and activist Angela Davis argues that prisons in the U.S. have "become venues of profit as well as punishment;" as mass incarceration has increased, the prison system has become more about economic factors than criminality. Professor of Law at Columbia University Bernard Harcourt contends that neoliberalism holds the state as incompetent when it comes to economic regulation but proficient at policing and punishing, and that this paradox has resulted in the expansion of penal confinement. According to "The Routledge Handbook of Poverty in the United States", "neoliberal social and economic policy has more deeply embedded the carceral state within the lives of the poor, transforming what it means to be poor in America." Historian Gary Gerstle reasons that while it may seem contradictory that the notions of market freedom and the establishment of a robust market economy occurred simultaneously with the reality of mass incarceration during the neoliberal period, neoliberals and even the classical economic liberals who preceded them "had long argued for the need to ringfence free markets, limiting participation to those who could handle its rigors." Only then could they operate "freely".


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The sociologists John Clegg and Adaner Usmani assert that the massive carceral state established in the US is partly the result of anemic social policy. As such, resolving the issue will necessitate significant redistribution coming from economic elites. They add that mass incarceration is "not a technical problem for which there are smart, straightforward, but just not-yet-realized solutions. Rather, it is a political problem, the solution of which will require confronting the entrenched power of the wealthy. In this sense, the task before us is to build the capacities of poor and working-class Americans to win redress from their exploiters."


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Another possibly cause for this increase of incarceration since the 1970s could be the "war on drugs", which started around that time. More elected prosecutors were favored by voters for promising to take more harsh approaches than their opponents, such as locking up more people.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Reporting at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (August 3, 2008), Becky Pettit, associate professor of sociology from the University of Washington and Bryan Sykes, a UW post-doctoral researcher, revealed that the mammoth increase in the United States's prison population since the 1970s is having profound demographic consequences that affect 1 in 50 Americans. Drawing data from a variety of sources that looked at prison and general populations, the researchers found that the boom in prison population is hiding lowered rates of fertility and increased rates of involuntary migration to rural areas and morbidity that is marked by a greater exposure to and risk of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV or AIDS.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: , two state prison systems, Alabama and South Carolina, segregated prisoners based on their HIV status. On December 21, U.S. District Court Judge Myron Thompson ruled in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of several inmates that Alabama's practice in doing so violated federal disabilities law. He noted the state's "outdated and unsupported assumptions about HIV and the prison system's ability to deal with HIV-positive prisoners."


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In 2022, the bi-partisan Federal Prison Oversight Act was introduced which would require the Department of Justice's Inspector General to conduct detailed inspections of each of the Bureau of Prisons' 122 facilities and would create an independent Justice Department position to investigate complaints. This was introduced shortly after corruption and abuse was discovered at a federal prison complex in Atlanta with the hopes that it would prevent such occurrences in the future.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: On August 12, 2013, at the American Bar Association's House of Delegates meeting, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the "Smart on Crime" program, which is "a sweeping initiative by the Justice Department that in effect renounces several decades of tough-on-crime anti-drug legislation and policies." Holder said the program "will encourage U.S. attorneys to charge defendants only with crimes "for which the accompanying sentences are better suited to their individual conduct, rather than excessive prison terms more appropriate for violent criminals or drug kingpins…" Running through Holder's statements, the increasing economic burden of over-incarceration was stressed. , the Smart on Crime program is not a legislative initiative but an effort "limited to the DOJ's policy parameters".


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The procedural use of strip searches and cavity searches in the prison system has raised human rights concerns.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In relation to popular culture, mass incarceration has become a popular issue in the Hip-Hop community. Artists like Tupac Shakur, NWA, LL Cool J, and Kendrick Lamar have written songs and poems that condemn racial disparities in the criminal justice system, specifically the alleged practice of police officers targeting African Americans. By presenting the negative implications of mass incarceration in a way that is widespread throughout popular culture, rap music is more likely to impact younger generations than a book or scholarly article would. Hip hop accounts of mass incarceration are based on victim-based testimony and are effective in inspiring others to speak out against the corrupt criminal justice system. The soul singer Raphael Saadiq's 2019 album, "Jimmy Lee", thematizes racial disparities in mass incarceration as well as other societal and family issues affecting African Americans.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: In addition to references in popular music, mass incarceration has also played a role in modern film. For example, Ava DuVernay's Netflix film "13th," released in 2017, criticizes mass incarceration and compares it to the history of slavery throughout the United States, beginning with the provision of the 13th Amendment that allows for involuntary servitude "as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." The film delivers the staggering message that mass incarceration could be equated to the post-Civil War Jim Crow Era.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The fight against mass incarceration has also been a part of the larger discourse in the 21st century movement for Black Lives. #BlackLivesMatter, a progressive movement created by Alicia Garza after the death of Trayvon Martin, was designed as an online platform to fight against anti-Black sentiments such as mass incarceration, police brutality, and ingrained racism within modern society. According to Garza, "Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks' contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression." This movement has focused on specific racial issues faced by African Americans in the justice system including police brutality, ending capital punishment, and eliminating "the criminalization and dehumanization of Black youth across all areas of society."


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: The Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice, is responsible for the administration of United States federal prisons.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Imprisonment by the state judicial systems has steadily diminished since 2006 to 2012, from 689,536 annually to 553,843 annually.


title: Incarceration in the United States

text: Across the world, the U.S. military operates several detention facilities. At year-end 2019, military correctional authorities held about 1,200 prisoners of any sentencing status


title: St. Louis Blues

text: The St. Louis Blues are a professional ice hockey team based in St. Louis. The Blues compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Central Division in the Western Conference. The franchise was founded in 1967 as one of the six teams from the 1967 NHL expansion and is named after the W. C. Handy song "Saint Louis Blues". They play their home games at the 18,096 seat Enterprise Center in downtown St. Louis, which has been their arena since moving from St. Louis Arena in 1994.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: The Blues won the Stanley Cup in 2019 and have the most Stanley Cup playoff appearances outside of the Original Six. Although perennial postseason contenders for most of their history, the franchise frequently struggled in the playoffs, including consecutive Stanley Cup Finals defeats at the end of their first three seasons. With the Blues' victory in their fourth Stanley Cup Finals, 49 years after their last appearance and in their 52nd year of existence, they became the final active team from the 1967 expansion to win their first Stanley Cup.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: The Blues have a rivalry with the Chicago Blackhawks, with whom they have shared a division since 1970. The Springfield Thunderbirds of the American Hockey League (AHL) is the team's minor league affiliate.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: Although the St. Louis Arena was not originally designed with hockey in mind, it met NHL standards of the era for size and had good sight lines for the game. After an ice plant was installed, the minor league St. Louis Flyers began play there in 1929. St. Louis soon began to attract the interest as a potential NHL market, eventually leading the owners of the moribund Ottawa Senators to relocate there for the 1934-35 season. The move proved both ill-conceived and ill-timed, as the renamed St. Louis Eagles continued to lose money. Their situation was not helped by the decision to keep the Eagles in the Canadian Division to keep the divisions balanced, which left the team with unaffordable travel expenses to games in Toronto and Montreal. The team finished last in the division and disbanded after one season.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: Following further contraction, the league stabilized at six teams after 1942. During this period, the NHL rebuffed attempts at further expansion. Eventually, the St. Louis Arena came under the control of the owners of the Chicago Black Hawks. The Black Hawks treated St. Louis as a secondary market, placing minor league affiliates there and even playing a few NHL games in St. Louis during the 1950's while the team still struggled to sell tickets at Chicago Stadium.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: The Blues were one of the six teams added to the NHL in the 1967 expansion, along with the Minnesota North Stars, Los Angeles Kings, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and California Seals. St. Louis was the last of the six expansion teams to gain entry into the League; the market was chosen over Baltimore at the insistence of the Black Hawks owners, James D. Norris and Arthur Wirtz. Following the Black Hawks' championship in 1961, the team became much more successful at the box office in Chicago, thus St. Louis was no longer useful as a secondary market. Nevertheless, the Black Hawks owners still owned the St. Louis Arena. They sought to unload what was then a decrepit facility which had not been well-maintained since the 1940s, and thus pressed the NHL to give the franchise to St. Louis, which had not submitted a formal expansion bid. The Black Hawks owners felt they could establish a "lovable loser" (much like the Cubs) with the St. Louis hockey team. NHL president Clarence Campbell said during the 1967 expansion meetings, "We want a team in St. Louis because of the city's geographical location and the fact that it has an adequate building."


title: St. Louis Blues

text: The team's first owners were insurance tycoon Sid Salomon Jr., his son, Sid Salomon III, and Robert L. Wolfson, who were granted the franchise in 1966. Sid Salomon III convinced his initially wary father to make a bid for the team. Former St. Louis Cardinals great Stan Musial and Musial's business partner Julius "Biggie" Garagnani were also members of the 16-man investment group that made the initial formal application for the franchise. Garagnani would never see the Blues franchise take the ice, as he died from a heart attack on June 19, 1967, less than three months before the Blues played their first preseason game. Upon acquiring the franchise in 1966, Salomon then spent several million dollars on extensive renovations for the 38-year-old arena, expanding it from 12,000 seats to 15,000.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: Lynn Patrick initially served as general manager and head coach. However, he resigned as head coach in late November after recording a 4–13–2 record. He was replaced by assistant coach Scotty Bowman, who thereafter led the team to a winning record for the rest of the season. Like the other five expansion teams, the Blues' roster consisted primarily of castoffs from the Original Six and players who had previously never managed to break out of the minor leagues. As part of the expansion, the NHL had agreed to put all of the expansion teams in the new Western Division, an arrangement which was intended to ensure all of the new teams all had an equal chance of reaching the playoffs.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: Under the expansion playoff format, Bowman's leadership was enough as the Blues qualified for the playoffs in their inaugural season. Although they had finished in third place, St. Louis was regarded as fairly evenly matched with the other three Western qualifiers since only four points separated first and fourth place. Ultimately, it was the Blues who prevailed by winning in seven games each over the Philadelphia Flyers and Minnesota North Stars to reach the Stanley Cup Finals. However, St. Louis was swept in their first Finals appearance by the heavily favored Montreal Canadiens.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: Under Bowman, the Blues dominated the West for the next two seasons, becoming the only expansion team to compile a winning record, and they captured division titles by wide margins each year. However, they were swept in the Stanley Cup Finals by the Montreal Canadiens in 1969 and then by the Boston Bruins in 1970.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: While the first Blues teams included fading veterans like Doug Harvey, Don McKenney and Dickie Moore, the goaltending tandem of veterans Glenn Hall and Jacques Plante proved more durable, winning a Vezina Trophy in 1969 behind a sterling defense that featured players like skilled defensive forward Jim Roberts, team captain Al Arbour and hardrock brothers Bob and Barclay Plager. Phil Goyette won the Lady Byng Trophy for the Blues in 1970 and New York Rangers castoff Red Berenson became the expansion team's first major star at center. The arena quickly became one of the loudest buildings in the NHL, a reputation it maintained throughout its tenure as the Blues' home.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: During that time, Salomon gained a reputation throughout the NHL as the top players' owner. He gave his players cars, signed them to deferred contracts and treated them to vacations in Florida. The players, used to being treated like mere commodities, felt the only way they could pay him back was to give their best on the ice every night.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: The Blues' successes in the late 1960s, however, did not continue into the 1970s. The Stanley Cup playoff format changed in such a way that a Western team was no longer guaranteed a Finals berth, and also the Chicago Black Hawks were moved into the Western Division following the 1970 expansion. The Blues lost Bowman, who left during the 1970–71 season following a power-sharing dispute with Sid Salomon III (who was taking an increasing role in team affairs), as well as Hall, Plante, Goyette and ultimately Berenson, who were all lost to retirement or trade. Veteran player Al Arbour hastily stepped in to coach the team. Under Arbour, the Blues essentially matched their 1969-70 regular season performance in their fourth season, and were still the best of the expansion teams; however, it was only good enough for second place in the West as St. Louis finished twenty points behind Chicago. The Blues would go on to be upset by the North Stars in six games, thus failing to advance past the first round for the first time in franchise history.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: Arbour, who officially retired as a player after the 1970–71 season, would remain behind the Blues' bench for the next two seasons. The Berenson trade did bring then-Detroit Red Wings star center Garry Unger, who ultimately scored 30 goals in eight consecutive seasons while breaking the NHL's consecutive games played record. Defensively, however, the Blues were less than stellar and saw Chicago and the Philadelphia Flyers overtake the Division. After missing the playoffs for the first time in 1973–74, the Blues ended up in the Smythe Division after a League realignment. This division was particularly weak, and in 1976–77, the Blues won it while finishing five games below .500, though this would be their last playoff appearance in the decade.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: In the meantime, the franchise was on the brink of financial collapse. This was partly due to the pressures of the World Hockey Association (WHA), but mostly the result of financial decisions made when the Salomons first acquired the franchise. The deferred contracts came due just as the Blues' performance began to slip. At one point, the Salomons cut the team's staff down to three employees. One of them was Emile Francis, who served as team president, general manager and head coach. In hopes of saving the franchise, Francis persuaded St. Louis-based pet food giant Ralston Purina to buy the team, arena, and the $8.8 million debt. The Salomons sold the Blues to Ralston on July 27, 1977. However, longtime Ralston Purina chairman R. Hal Dean said that he only intended to keep the Blues as a Ralston subsidiary only temporarily until a more stable owner could be found who would keep the team in St. Louis. Ralston renamed the arena the "Checkerdome." After two awful years, including what is still a franchise-worst 18–50–12 record with 48 points in 1979, the Blues made the playoffs the following year, the first of 25 consecutive postseason appearances.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: After being one of the worst teams a couple of years before, they were one of the best in 1981, as they finished with a then-franchise-best record of 45–18–17 record which translated to 107 points and the second-best record in the league. Ten players reached at least 20 goals, including Wayne Babych, future Hall of Famer Bernie Federko, and team captain Brian Sutter. They also had strong goaltending led by Mike Liut. They would get rewarded as head coach Red Berenson won the Jack Adams Award, Mike Liut finished a close second to Wayne Gretzky in the Hart Trophy voting, and earned the top spot on the NHL All-Star team, Larry Patey finished third in the Frank J. Selke Trophy voting, and Blake Dunlop won the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy. Their regular-season success, however, did not transfer into the playoffs, as they were eliminated by the New York Rangers in the second round 2–4 after beating the Pittsburgh Penguins in the first round 3–2. The Blues would underachieve greatly the following year as they posted a 32–40–8, but they beat the Winnipeg Jets 3–1 in the Norris Division Semi-Finals before dropping to the Chicago Black Hawks in the Norris Division 2–4.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: Ralston then filed a $60 million anti-trust lawsuit in U.S. District Court, claiming that the NHL broke federal antitrust laws and breached the duty of good faith and fair dealing by voting to reject the sale and transfer of the Blues to Hunter's group. They also requested that the court allow them to give up the team and bar the NHL from interfering with the sale of the team. On June 3, Ralston announced that it had no interest in running the team anymore. Because they were not required to participate in the 1983 NHL Entry Draft, they did not send a representative, which led the Blues to forfeit their picks. The day after the draft, the NHL filed a $78 million counter-suit against Ralston, accusing Ralston of "damaging the league by willfully, wantonly and maliciously collapsing its St. Louis Blues hockey operation." The NHL also said that Ralston broke a league rule that an owner had to give two years' notice before dissolving a franchise. Ralston called the counter-suit "ridiculous" and gave the NHL an ultimatum: if the NHL would not accept Hunter's offer by June 14, Ralston would dissolve the team and sell its players and assets to other teams. The Board of Governors rejected the offer and "terminated" the team on June 13, one day before Ralston's supposed deadline. It then took control of the franchise and began searching for a new owner. League president John Ziegler said they would try to keep the team in St. Louis. However, had the league not found a new owner by August 6, it would dissolve the team and hold a dispersal draft for the players. On July 27, 1983, ten days before the deadline, the NHL approved a bid from businessman Harry Ornest and a group of St. Louis-based investors for the team and the arena. Ornest had made plans to buy the team as early as March, but built up his efforts in late June to have enough money. Ornest immediately reverted the name of the team's home venue to the St. Louis Arena. To date, this is the closest that an NHL team has come to folding since the Cleveland Barons merged with the Minnesota North Stars after the 1977–78 season.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: Ornest ran the Blues very cheaply, though the players did not mind. According to Sutter, they wanted to stay in St. Louis because it reminded them of the rural Canadian towns where many of them grew up. For instance, Ornest asked many players to defer their salaries to help meet operating costs, but the players always got paid in the end. During most of Ornest's tenure, the Blues had only 26 players under contract–23 in St. Louis, plus three on their farm team, the Montana Magic. Most NHL teams during the mid-1980s had over 60 players under contract. Despite operating on a shoestring, the Blues remained competitive even though they never finished more than six games over .500 in Ornest's three years as owner. During this time, Doug Gilmour, drafted by St. Louis in 1982, emerged as a star.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: While the Blues remained competitive, they were unable to keep many of their young players. More often than not, several of the Blues' emerging stars ended up as Calgary Flames, and the sight of Flames executive Al MacNeil was always greeted with dread. In fact, several of the Blues' young stars, such as Rob Ramage, Joe Mullen and Gilmour, were main cogs in the Flames' 1989 Stanley Cup win. Sutter and Federko were the only untouchables on the Blues during that era. By 1986, the team reached the Campbell Conference Finals against the Flames. Doug Wickenheiser's overtime goal in Game 6 to cap a furious comeback remains one of the greatest moments in team history (known locally as the "Monday Night Miracle"), but the Blues lost Game 7, 2–1. Years later, Sutter argued that had the Blues made it to the Stanley Cup Finals, they would have likely beaten the Canadiens, having won two out of three games against the Habs in the regular season. After that season, Ornest sold the team to a group led by St. Louis businessman Michael Shanahan.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: St. Louis kept chugging along through the late 1980s and early 1990s. General manager Ron Caron made astute moves, landing forwards Brett Hull, Adam Oates and Brendan Shanahan, defenseman Al MacInnis and goaltender Curtis Joseph, among others. While the Blues contended during this time period, they never passed the second round of the playoffs. Nonetheless, their on-ice success was enough for a consortium of 19 companies to buy the team. They also provided the capital to build the Kiel Center (now the Enterprise Center), which opened in 1994.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: Hull, nicknamed the "Golden Brett" (a reference to his father, NHL legend Bobby Hull, who was nicknamed the "Golden Jet"), became one of the League's top stars and a scoring sensation, netting 86 goals in 1990–91 en route to earning the Hart Memorial Trophy as the league's most valuable player. Hull's 86 goals set the record for most goals in a single season by a right-winger (and the third-most overall at the time). Only Wayne Gretzky found the net more than Hull during any given three-year period. Despite posting the second-best regular-season record in the entire league in 1990–91, the Blues were upset in the second round of the playoffs to the Minnesota North Stars, a defeat that was symbolic of St. Louis' playoff struggles.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: Mike Keenan was hired as both general manager and coach before the abbreviated 1994–95 season, with the hope that he could end the postseason turmoil that Blues fans had endured for years. Keenan instituted major changes, including trades that sent away fan favorites Brendan Shanahan and Curtis Joseph, as well as the acquisition of the legendary-but-aging Wayne Gretzky and goaltender Grant Fuhr, both from the declining Los Angeles Kings. During the season, he publicly criticized Gretzky, who entered free agency after the season, declined an offer from the Blues, and took a less lucrative contract with the New York Rangers. Ultimately, Keenan's playoff resume with St. Louis included a first-round exit in 1995 and a second-round exit in 1996, and he was fired on December 19, 1996. Caron was reinstated as interim general manager for the rest of the season, and general manager Larry Pleau was hired on June 9, 1997. Hull, who had a lengthy feud with Keenan, left for the Dallas Stars in 1998. He went on to win the Stanley Cup with the Stars the next year, scoring a controversial goal on the Buffalo Sabres' Dominik Hasek to clinch the Cup for Dallas. The Blues ended the 1990s as the only NHL team to make the playoffs for the entire decade, although a Stanley Cup title still eluded the franchise.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: Defenseman Chris Pronger (acquired from the Hartford Whalers in 1995 for Brendan Shanahan), Keith Tkachuk, Pavol Demitra, Pierre Turgeon, Al MacInnis and goaltender Roman Turek kept the Blues a contender in the NHL. In 1999–2000, the team notched a franchise-record 114 points during the regular season, earning the Presidents' Trophy for the League's best record. However, they were stunned by the San Jose Sharks in the first round of the 2000 playoffs in seven games. In 2001, the Blues advanced to the Western Conference Finals before bowing out in five games to the eventual champions, the Colorado Avalanche. Nonetheless, the team remained competitive for the next three years, despite never advancing beyond the second round. Despite years of mediocrity and the stigma of never being able to "take the next step," the Blues were a playoff presence every year from 1980 to 2004 – the third-longest streak in North American professional sports history (all three of which being held by NHL teams). However, they never made an appearance in the Stanley Cup Finals. In fact, they made it to the conference finals only two times in their streak (1986 and 2001).


title: St. Louis Blues

text: Amid several questionable personnel moves and an unstable ownership situation, the Blues finished the 2005–06 season with their worst record in 27 years. They missed the playoffs for only the fourth time in franchise history. Moreover, for the first time in club history, the normally excellent support seen by St. Louisans began decrease, with crowds normally numbering around 12,000, notably less than the team's normal high (about 18,000 in a 19,500-seat arena). Wal-Mart heir Nancy Walton Laurie and her husband Bill purchased the Blues in 1999. On June 17, 2005, the Lauries announced that they would sell the team. Bill Laurie, a former point guard at Memphis State University, had long desired to buy and move a National Basketball Association (NBA) team to St. Louis (coming close to achieving this in 1999, with an unsuccessful attempt to purchase the then-Vancouver Grizzlies), and it was thought that this desire caused him to neglect the Blues. On September 29, 2005, it was announced that the Lauries had signed an agreement to sell the Blues to SCP Worldwide, a consulting and investment group headed by former Madison Square Garden president Dave Checketts. On November 14, 2005, the Blues announced that SCP Worldwide had officially withdrawn from negotiations to buy the team. On December 27, 2005, it was announced that the Blues had signed a letter of intent to exclusively negotiate with General Sports and Entertainment, LLC. However, after the period of exclusivity, SCP entered the picture again. On March 24, 2006, the Lauries completed the sale of the Blues and the lease to the Savvis Center to SCP and TowerBrook Capital Partners, L.P., a private equity firm. The Blues are currently the only team in the four major North American sports (ice hockey, basketball, baseball, and American football) to be owned by a private equity firm.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: Following the disappointing 2005–06 season, which saw the Blues with the worst record in the NHL, the new management focused on rebuilding the franchise. Under new management, the Blues promptly installed John Davidson as president of hockey operations, moving Pleau to a mostly advisory role. The former New York Rangers goaltender promptly made multiple blockbuster deals, picking up Jay McKee, Bill Guerin and Manny Legace from free agency, and bringing Doug Weight back to St. Louis after a brief (and productive) stopover in Carolina. Weight was again traded in December 2007 to the Anaheim Ducks, along with a minor league player, in exchange for Andy McDonald. At the beginning of the 2006–07 season, the Blues looked to be competitive in the Central Division. However, injuries plagued the team all season, and the lack of a bona fide scorer hampered them as well. Fan support was sluggish during the first half of the campaign, and the end of the calendar year was capped by an 11-game losing streak. On December 11, 2006, the Blues fired head coach Mike Kitchen and replaced him with former Los Angeles Kings head coach Andy Murray. Davidson also installed a strong development program under head scout Jarmo Kekalainen, using the team's raft of high draft picks in 2006 and 2007 to select highly touted prospects such as T. J. Oshie, Erik Johnson and David Perron. On January 4, 2007, the Blues had a record of 6–1–3 in their previous ten games, which was the best in the NHL during that stretch. Despite a healthy 24-point jump from the previous season, the strain of playing in a conference where seven teams finished with more than 100 points kept them out of the playoffs for the second year in a row.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: Just before the 2007 NHL trade deadline, the Blues traded several key players, including Bill Guerin, Keith Tkachuk and Dennis Wideman, in exchange for draft picks, though they re-signed Tkachuk after the season ended. Brad Boyes, picked up from the Boston Bruins in exchange for Wideman, became the fastest Blues player to reach 40 goals since Brett Hull, doing so during the 2007–08 season. During the 2007 off-season, the Blues signed free agent Paul Kariya to a three-year contract worth $18 million, re-signed defenseman Barret Jackman to a one-year contract, lost their captain Dallas Drake to the Detroit Red Wings, and traded prospect Carl Soderberg to the Bruins in exchange for yet more depth in the goal crease, Hannu Toivonen.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: On October 2, 2007, the Blues finalized the season-starting roster, which included rookies David Perron, Steven Wagner and Erik Johnson. On October 10, the Blues introduced a new mascot, Louie. Two months later, they traded Doug Weight, a 38-year-old four-time All-Star center, to the Anaheim Ducks as part of a package to acquire 30-year-old center Andy McDonald. On February 8, 2008, it was announced that, after going much of the season without a captain, defenseman Eric Brewer was chosen as the team's 19th captain. The team later traded veteran defenseman Bryce Salvador to the New Jersey Devils for enforcer, and St. Louis native, Cam Janssen. He made his debut two days later, wearing number 55 against the Phoenix Coyotes.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: After spending the first half of the 2008–09 season at or near the bottom of the Western Conference standings, the Blues began to turn things around behind the solid goaltending of Chris Mason. After a strong second-half run, the Blues made the 2009 playoffs on April 10, 2009, after defeating the Columbus Blue Jackets 3–1. On April 12, the Blues clinched the sixth seed in the West with a 1–0 win against the Colorado Avalanche. For the first time in five years (that is, since the lockout), the Blues were in the playoffs. They faced the third-seeded Vancouver Canucks in the first round, but despite the team's tremendous run to end the season, the Blues would ultimately lose the series in a quick four-game sweep.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: The Blues fired head coach Andy Murray on January 2, 2010, after a disappointing record (17–17–6, 40 points), sitting in 12th place in the Conference. Especially galling were the frequent blown leads after two periods, and with the worst home record (6–13–3) posted in the entire NHL. After his duties as interim coach for the rest of the 2009–10 season, Davis Payne was named the 23rd head coach in the Blues' history on April 14. Payne was previously the head coach of the Blues top minor league affiliate, the Peoria Rivermen of the American Hockey League (AHL).


title: St. Louis Blues

text: On March 17, 2011, it was announced that the St. Louis Blues were for sale. During the 2011 NHL offseason, the team signed many key free agents, including Brian Elliott, Scott Nichol, Kent Huskins, Jason Arnott and Jamie Langenbrunner. They fired their head coach, Davis Payne, and named Ken Hitchcock as his replacement on November 6, 2011. David Backes was also announced as the new team captain.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: On March 17, 2012, the Blues became the first team to reach 100 points and clinch a playoff berth in the 2011–12 season under Hitchcock, qualifying for their first playoffs since 2008–09. They would finish second in the Western Conference, behind the Vancouver Canucks. During the 2012 playoffs, they won their first playoff series since 2002, eliminating the San Jose Sharks in five games. The Blues were swept by the eventual Stanley Cup champions, the Los Angeles Kings, in the following round.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: In 2012–13, the Blues completed the lockout-shortened season in fourth place in the Western Conference. They were again eliminated by Los Angeles, however, this time in six games in the first round of the playoffs, despite taking an initial 2–0 series lead.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: The following season, 2013–14, the team hit the 100-point mark for the sixth time in franchise history, and gained a franchise record of 52 wins. Their chance of winning the Central Division title, the top seed in the West, and the Presidents' Trophy would all evaporate, after they lost their final six games and wound up in second place in the Division, this time to the Colorado Avalanche. The slump haunted them, as they blew a 2–0 series lead to the defending champion Chicago Blackhawks, losing the first-round series in six games. This marked the second-straight year the Blues lost in the first round of the playoffs to the reigning champions in six games after leading the series 2–0.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: In 2014–15, the Blues won their second Central Division championship in four years and faced the Minnesota Wild in round one of the 2015 playoffs. However, for the third straight year, they lost in the first round and in six games. During the offseason, forward T. J. Oshie was traded to the Washington Capitals in exchange for Troy Brouwer.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: In 2015–16, the Blues finished in second place in the Central Division to the Dallas Stars. The Blues took on the defending champion Chicago Blackhawks in the first-round series. The Blues jumped to a 3–1 series lead, but struggled in games 5 and 6. However, St. Louis ended their first-round losing streak by beating Chicago 3–2 in game 7 of the series. They moved on to the next round, where they defeated the Dallas Stars in another seven-game series to advance to their first Western Conference Finals since 2001. The Blues season would come to an end at the hands of the San Jose Sharks, who eliminated them in six games.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: On June 13, 2016, it was announced that Mike Yeo would replace Hitchcock as head coach of the Blues following the 2016–17 season. The 2016 offseason saw big changes for the Blues, as team captain David Backes left the team to sign with the Boston Bruins, and goaltender Brian Elliott was traded to the Calgary Flames, while veteran forward Troy Brouwer also signed with Calgary as a free agent. Steve Ott also left the team, signing a free-agent deal with the Red Wings. Jake Allen was now the starting goaltender for the Blues, while the team also signed former Nashville Predators backup Carter Hutton. Former Blues forward David Perron was brought back on a free agent deal, while defenseman Alex Pietrangelo was named team captain.


title: St. Louis Blues

text: The team started the season by posting a record of 10–1–2 in their first 13 home games. However, they only won three games on the road during the first two months of the season. Despite defeating the Blackhawks in the 2017 NHL Winter Classic by the score of 4–1, the Blues fired Hitchcock and promoted Yeo to head coach on February 1, 2017. Despite an impressive run into the end of the season, when they gained most points in the league from February 1, when Hitchcock was fired, to the end of the season, the Blues were eliminated in the second round by the Nashville Predators in six games.