Title: Incarceration nation
Headings: Incarceration nation
Feature
Incarceration nation
How did we get here?
Who's in prison?
The psychological impact of prison
Policy changes and other solutions
Types of incarceration

Content: "Part of what's really swelled our jail and prison population, especially our jail population, is our inability to deal with the mental health crisis that we're facing in this country," says Tangney. " We have an enormous number of people who are suffering from very treatable illnesses who are not getting treatment and who end up getting caught in the criminal justice system as opposed to the mental health system." The rise in incarceration rates has also disproportionately affected minority populations, the report found. In 2011, for example, about 40 percent of those behind bars were black, although African Americans and others of African descent make up only 13.2 percent of the U.S. population, one study found. Hispanics also were over-represented in prison, at 20 percent of the prison population compared with 17.1 percent of the U.S. population. The report notes that such disparities in sentencing were caused partly by more severe laws and the war on drugs, as well as "small but systematic racial differences in case processing." For instance, blacks were more likely to be incarcerated before trial, to fare worse in plea agreements that might otherwise have kept them out of prison, to receive the death penalty, and to be arrested and charged with drug crimes, which carry stiff mandatory sentences, the report found. People of color also are more likely to suffer disparities in mental health treatment in general, which results in their being "more likely to be ushered into the criminal justice system," says Tiffany Townsend, PhD, senior director of ethnic minority affairs in APA's Public Interest Directorate. "The rise in incarceration transformed not only the criminal justice system, but also U.S. race relations and the institutional landscape of urban poverty," the report notes. Yet while some studies show U.S. crime dropped as incarceration rates went up, the report found no causal link between the two, Haney says. "