The Fabric of Our Nation

Drive long enough on any American highway and you will pass a prison. Even at a distance, its ominous form is instantly recognizable, the telltale watchtowers and razor wire–topped fences marking it as an outpost of the United States’s sprawling penal system. Millions of people are incarcerated in prisons, jails, and detention centers across the country, and tens of millions more must organize their lives around imprisoned loved ones. This web of incarceration is so large that it has