Washington (CNN) Half of US adults have an immediate family member who has been in jail or prison, a report released Thursday said.

The group FWD.us released the report outlining the results of a wide-ranging survey taken earlier this year, which showed further that one in seven people have an immediate family member who has spent a full year or longer in prison and one in 34 have an immediate family member who has spent 10 years or longer in prison. The report defined immediate family as a parent, child, sibling, current romantic partner or someone else with whom respondent had a child.

The group that released the report is supportive of criminal justice reform efforts around the country and counts billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates among its founders.

Zoë Towns, the group's senior criminal justice reform director, told CNN after the release of the report that she hoped it would be a "wake up call" as some politicians have begun to rethink policies that led the US to becoming the world's biggest jailer

"We've gotten to the point that half of our families are being undermined," Towns said.

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