Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley confused many when she claimed that 1 in 4 of the worldâs people are imprisoned.
Pressley, who is a member of the âSquad,â along with New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, unveiled her plan for criminal justice reform titled âthe Peopleâs Justice Guarantee.â The proposal would overhaul the justice system in the United States to reduce prison populations and create a system that is âsmaller, safer, less punitive, and more humane.â
She announced her proposal in a tweet on Thursday morning. In her tweets, she called the American justice system âracist, xenophobic, rogue, [and] fundamentally flawed beyond reform.â She also claimed that a quarter of the worldâs population is locked up in American prisons.
Pressley was likely referring to the statistic that 22% of the worldâs incarcerated people are in the United States, but her poorly worded claim that one in four people in the world is jailed in America led many to mock the congresswomanâs math.
We have almost 2 billion people locked in cages in America?
Are we just making up math now?! https://t.co/WAnQr9RH20
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) November 14, 2019
We have 1.9 billion people in cages? Good Lord that must be crowded. https://t.co/YJJN8crGnZ
— Dan Gainor (@dangainor) November 14, 2019
uh, there’s almost 8 billion people in the world, and 2 billion of them are in cages in America? You can’t even say that about China, and they A) have a lot of people, and B) like to keep a lot of them in cages. https://t.co/CgHrx9gk1D
— Duane Patterson (@Radioblogger) November 14, 2019
Criminal justice reform has been one of the few bipartisan issues to make progress in President Trump’s first term. He signed the First Step Act, a bill that reduced some federal prison sentences and offered other reforms in 2018.
UPDATE: Pressley has since deleted her tweet.
