The FIRST STEP Act was a bipartisan first step to addressing the incarceration of 225,000 prisoners on the federal system. However, there are also 1.3 million prisoners held in state prisons who remain unaffected by this legislation.

Some studies show it costs an average of $31,000 per year to keep an individual incarcerated and can reach as high as $60,000 depending on the state. State and local governments combined spend about 89 percent of total correctional costs in the United States. Further, the unemployment rate for formerly incarcerated people is nearly five times higher than the unemployment rate for the general US population, and substantially higher than even the worst years of the Great Depression.

Are there economic gains in restructuring state and local incarceration systems? What could be sustainable alternatives to current practices at the state and local levels?