Record-High Ratio of Americans in Prison
Record-High Ratio of Americans in Prison - Politics on The Huffington PostNEW YORK — For the first time in U.S. history, more than one of every 100 adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report documenting America’s rank as the world’s No. 1 incarcerator. It urges states to curtail corrections spending by placing fewer low-risk offenders behind bars.Using state-by-state data, the report says 2,319,258 Americans were in jail or prison at the start of 2008 _ one out of every 99.1 adults. Whether per capita or in raw numbers, it’s more than any other nation.
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.
Four states _ Vermont, Michigan, Oregon and Connecticut _ now spend more on corrections than they do on higher education, the report said.
The report said prison growth and higher incarceration rates do not reflect an increase 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 racial disparity for women also is stark. One of every 355 white women aged 35 to 39 is behind bars, compared with one of every 100 black women in that age group.
The report said the United States incarcerates more people than any other nation, 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 round out the Top 10.
The U.S. also is among the world leaders in capital punishment. According to Amnesty International, its 53 executions in 2006 were exceeded only by China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and Sudan.
Land of the free, huh? You can thank the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs™ for a lot of this increase. Mandatory minimums, enacted in 1986, put more non-violent drug offenders behind bars for longer periods, because, you know, prison is such a great rehab. A poor inner-city black person caught with 5g of crack gets the same prison time as a rich suburban white person caught with half a kilo of powder. Marijuana growers legally operating in the twelve medical marijuana states face prison because the feds’ can’t let sick people use pot or it ruins the whole “pot is a danger to society” house of cards they’ve constructed to defend prohibition. Forfeiture laws turn police work into a profit venture and conspiracy charges net dealers’ girlfriends and wives whose crime was not having anyone higher up to snitch on. It’s the ultimate federal jobs program: lock up lots of people then build more prisons and hire more guards.
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