1 in 136 U.S. Residents Behind Bars

[tocqueville]

By ELIZABETH WHITE, Associated Press Writer
15 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Prisons and jails added more than 1,000 inmates each week for a year, putting almost 2.2 million people, or one in every 136 U.S. residents, behind bars by last summer.

The total on June 30, 2005, was 56,428 more than at the same time in 2004, the government reported Sunday. That 2.6 percent increase from mid-2004 to mid-2005 translates into a weekly rise of 1,085 inmates.

Of particular note was the gain of 33,539 inmates in jails, the largest increase since 1997, researcher Allen J. Beck said. That was a 4.7 percent growth rate, compared with a 1.6 percent increase in people held in state and federal prisons.

Prisons accounted for about two-thirds of all inmates, or 1.4 million, while the other third, nearly 750,000, were in local jails, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060521/ap_on_re_us/prison_population_2

[joemurphy]

1. Too many. Something's wrong. n/t

[leftchick]

4. war on drugs

and porn

[sui generis]

2. how many of those jails have operations that are outsourced

to private companies? Welcome to the power of the prison lobby. Where there is profit to be made, there will be a powerful lobby.

[Asgaya Dihi]

3. They don't even count juveniles

The real count is higher and has been for years, for some reason they only count adults and they don't count some of the facilities they are locked up in so we don't get all of those. In 2003 we had 2,212,475 behind bars, today it's got to be a fair bit higher. Point #10 at http://drugwarfacts.org/prison.htm

One part of this that's uglier than most is the racial aspect. The numbers vary slightly depending on the years evaluated, but the trend is pretty solid for the following. "Mandatory sentencing laws disproportionately affect people of color. African-Americans make up 15% of the country’s drug users, yet they make up 37% of those arrested for drug violations, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of those sentenced to prison for a drug offense" http://www.idpi.us/resources/factsheets/mm_factsheet.htm

Something is really wrong, no doubt about it. Safe school zones combined with mandatory minimums and three strikes laws haven't been good to some neighborhoods. The drug war got out of control a long time ago, but without a working press we never heard much about it.

[Orsino]

5. Freedom's on the march. n/t