Velvet Posted February 29, 2008 Report Share Posted February 29, 2008 It boggles my mind, but one in nine 'merican black males aged 20-34 are behind bars. Incredible.http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/02/28/prison.population.ap/index.html?iref=mpstoryviewNEW YORK (AP) -- For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report.art.prison.gi.jpgSan Quentin State Prison in California holds more than 5,200 inmates.The report, released Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, said the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said.Using updated state-by-state data, the report said 2,319,258 adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008 -- one out of every 99.1 adults, and more than any other country in the world.The steadily growing inmate population "is saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime," the report said.Susan Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States, said budget woes are prompting officials in many states to consider new, cost-saving corrections policies that might have been shunned in the recent past for fear of appearing soft in crime."We're seeing more and more states being creative because of tight budgets," she said in an interview. "They want to be tough on crime, they want to be a law-and-order state -- but they also want to save money, and they want to be effective."The report cited Kansas and Texas as states which have acted decisively to slow the growth of their inmate population. Their actions include greater use of community supervision for low-risk offenders and employing sanctions other than reimprisonment for ex-offenders who commit technical violations of parole and probation rules."The new approach, born of bipartisan leadership, is allowing the two states to ensure they have enough prison beds for violent offenders while helping less dangerous lawbreakers become productive, taxpaying citizens," the report said.Don't Miss * Prison stabbing ends violent lifeWhile many state governments have shown bipartisan interest in curbing prison growth, there also are persistent calls to proceed cautiously."We need to be smarter," said David Muhlhausen, a criminal justice expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation. "We're not incarcerating all the people who commit serious crimes -- but we're also probably incarcerating people who don't need to be."According to the report, the inmate population increased last year in 36 states and the federal prison system.The largest percentage increase -- 12 percent -- was in Kentucky, where Gov. Steve Beshear highlighted the cost of corrections in his budget speech last month. He noted that the state's crime rate had increased only about 3 percent in the past 30 years, while the state's inmate population has increased by 600 percent.The Pew report was compiled by the Center on the State's Public Safety Performance Project, which is working directly with 13 states on developing programs to divert offenders from prison without jeopardizing public safety."For all the money spent on corrections today, there hasn't been a clear and convincing return for public safety," said the project's director, Adam Gelb. "More and more states are beginning to rethink their reliance on prisons for lower-level offenders and finding strategies that are tough on crime without being so tough on taxpayers."The report said prison growth and higher incarceration rates do not reflect a parallel increase in crime or in the nation's overall population. Instead, it said, more people are behind bars mainly because of tough sentencing measures, such as "three-strikes" laws, that result in longer prison stays."For some groups, the incarceration numbers are especially startling," the report said. "While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine."The nationwide figures, as of January 1, include 1,596,127 people in state and federal prisons and 723,131 in local jails -- a total 2,319,258 out of almost 230 million American adults.The report said the United States is the world's incarceration leader, far ahead of more populous China with 1.5 million people behind bars. It said the U.S. also is the leader in inmates per capita (750 per 100,000 people), ahead of Russia (628 per 100,000) and other former Soviet bloc nations which make up the rest of the Top 10. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ms.Huxtable Posted February 29, 2008 Report Share Posted February 29, 2008 Could be a strategy to stay out of Iraq. I know I'd rather be safe behind bars than risking my life in a war.Seriously though, that's staggering. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timouse Posted February 29, 2008 Report Share Posted February 29, 2008 [color:purple]at least china puts their prison population to work making consumer goods for wal mart.that's just staggering, particularly Kentucky, where the prison population has increased 600% while crime rates have only increased 3%. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Esau. Posted February 29, 2008 Report Share Posted February 29, 2008 I know I'd rather be safe behind bars than risking my life in a war.Probally safer in Iraq to be honest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LXQ42 Posted February 29, 2008 Report Share Posted February 29, 2008 There MUST be an election coming up....oh wait... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
\/\/illy Posted February 29, 2008 Report Share Posted February 29, 2008 I know I'd rather be safe behind bars than risking my life in a war.Probally safer in Iraq to be honest.At least the sphincter is safer in Iraq. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattm Posted February 29, 2008 Report Share Posted February 29, 2008 That's absolutely nuts. 10% of black male adults behind bars.You'd think that seeing something like this they'd start to rethink things a little deeper. What causes the crime? Maybe it's poverty. Maybe if you're so poor you can't afford much and get into drugs. Maybe then you need money for the drugs so you commit crimes/violence. Maybe if you were helped out of being so poor in the first place you'd never have turned to the drugs and ended up in jail. Maybe if your country didn't waste so much money terrorizing the rest of the world and payed more attention to you, you'd be better off and so would everyone else. Oh, wait, you live in the states, oops, sorry to get your hopes up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velvet Posted February 29, 2008 Author Report Share Posted February 29, 2008 Maybe the USA has privatised incarceration to the point where it is good economy keeping people in jail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hal Johnson Posted February 29, 2008 Report Share Posted February 29, 2008 Maybe they should open more Black Schools. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hartamophone Posted March 1, 2008 Report Share Posted March 1, 2008 That's absolutely nuts. 10% of black male adults behind bars.Not quite. It's ten percent (a little bit more, actually) for the 25-34 age group. That's an absurd number, but doesn't represent the entire population of black adult males. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SevenSeasJim Posted March 1, 2008 Report Share Posted March 1, 2008 At least the U.S. is winning the "War On Drugs" :wink: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bagochips Posted March 1, 2008 Report Share Posted March 1, 2008 At least the U.S. is winning the "War On Drugs"I remember reading somewhere that almost half of all Americans in prison are there on drug charges, and that about half of them are in for pot.Good ol' Land of the Free. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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