“In 2014, prison-related policies also cost the U.S. economy as much as $87 billion in gross domestic product — the value of all goods produced and service provided by a nation in a given year — according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. Authors of the center’s report, released Thursday, reviewed Bureau of Justice Statistics data from 2014, when there were as many as 15.8 million people convicted of felonies who were of working age. Nearly 7 million of them were formerly incarcerated.”

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