Select Page

Inside the US Marshals’ Secretive, Deadly Detention Empire
by Seth Freed Wessler
Posted November 8, 2019

US marshal's deadly detention empireOn any given day, the Marshals hold more people than Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and more than all the county jails of any state except California and Texas. The Marshals run this vast pretrial detention system without owning or operating any jails. Instead, the agency houses its detainees in about 1,100 jails and private facilities around the country.

Almost two-thirds of these federal pretrial detainees—who have not been convicted of any crimes—are held in local lockups like Tom Green, typically run by sheriffs. The remainder are held in either privately run jails under contract with the Marshals or federal detention centers run by the Bureau of Prisons, mostly in a handful of large cities. More…

The Facts:
The United States has the most people in prison of any nation on the planet.

Reflect On:
How can we reconcile the  belief that the US is “the land of the free” with the fact that the US has the most prisoners? Is it because the US is the most violent and criminal nation? Or is it because of US policies?