For families of the incarcerated, conviction comes with a cost

Each year, the U.S. spends $80 billion to incarcerate more than 2.4 million people. But when it comes to communities, the costs are even more staggering. Of those inmates, a disproportionate number come from just a handful of neighborhoods in the country’s biggest cities. Brownsville, Brooklyn, has one of the highest concentrations of “million-dollar blocks” — places where the state is paying more than $1 million a year to incarcerate the residents of a single census block — in the country. We talked to the families they leave behind.