Posted on 02/29/2008 5:13:51 AM PST by Carbonsteel
NEW YORK — More than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison — making the United States the world's incarceration leader, according to a new report tracking the surge in U.S. inmate population.
The report, released Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, urged U.S. states to curtail corrections spending by placing fewer low-risk offenders behind bars.
"The United States imprisons more people than any country in the world," the report said. Using updated state-by-state data, it said more than 2.3 million adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008 — or one of every 99.1 adults out of a total population of some 230 million adults.
The numbers put the United States far ahead of more populous China, which it said has 1.5 million people behind bars, and Russia, which has 890,000. The Pew report cited January statistics from the "World Prison Brief" released by the International Center for Prison Studies at London's King's College.
It also said the U.S. — with 750 inmates per 100,000 people — "is the global leader in the rate at which it incarcerates its citizenry, outpacing nations like South Africa and Iran."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
It is not like we just lock people up arbitrarily. Those folks in our prisons are there because a judge and jury determined that they needed to be punished for committing one or more crimes. This high rate of incarceration probably says a lot about the break down of our society more than anything else.
We went out to one of the nicer restaurants one evening. Our taxi was met by the doorman armed with an AK-47. I kid you not.
But, hey. I bet their incarceration rate is lower.
I'll take your word for how bad it was there, but you can find what you've described in any US inner city.
I wrote a book on this subject called “The Spirit Set Me Free” (Paulist Press) available on Amazon.com
It features ordinary men and woman from across the country who discovered Christ where they least expected to — in prison.
Frederick Hermann
If you do the crime, you must do the time.
The widely cited figure of 1/3 foreigners in our jails is for FEDERAL prisons, which hold only about 10% of all prisoners (and, of course, concentrate on smuggling, immigration and other offenses whre foreigners would be overrepresented). A DOJ reports says only about 10% of the total number of prisoners in the US are foreigners. Check the site for “Bureau of Justice Statistics.”
It surprises me that there are no illegal aliens in state prisons. There’s no illegal in San Quentin?
Not none — I didn’t say that — just not 1/3, on a nationwide basis.
SOLUTION: Let all the law abiding live behind the protected prison walls, let all the convicts out. Soon the convicts will have all killed themselves in gang wars leaving us with a new start.
Reminds me of the French Quarter in New Orleans BEFORE Katrina hit. Lot’s of razor wire, too. And it’s still like that today...
Excellent quote. The same could be said for taxation, too.....
Begs the question: Why do do many people in such a wealthy country decide to break the law?
1 in every 31 adults, were incarcerated or on probation or parole at yearend 2006."
The story isn’t how many people are locked up, the story here is the necessity of having to lock these people up. Locking up crimnals is a reaction to their behavior and their personal choice to commit crime. Jail or prison is where they need to be.
With freedom comes great responsibility. Some can’t handle either.
The reason why we have so many people in jail is simple: We have a lot of crime.
Another problem is that a lot of them discover muhamad in there too.
Or, they could follow the best line in “Liar, Liar” -
“STOP BREAKING THE LAW, 4$$h013!”
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