U.S. Prison Population Soars in 2003, '04

[CatWoman]

Cue Gomer Pyle: Surprise, Surprise!!

By SIOBHAN McDONOUGH, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Growing at a rate of about 900 inmates each week between mid-2003 and mid-2004, the nation's prisons and jails held 2.1 million people, or one in every 138 U.S. residents, the government reported Sunday.

By last June 30, there were 48,000 more inmates, or 2.3 percent, more than the year before, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The total inmate population has hovered around 2 million for the past few years, reaching 2.1 million on June 30, 2002, and just below that mark a year later.

While the crime rate has fallen over the past decade, the number of people in prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates released, said the report's co-author, Paige Harrison. For example, the number of admissions to federal prisons in 2004 exceeded releases by more than 8,000, the study found.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=716&e=3&u=/ap/20050424/ap_on_re_us/prison_population

[lthuedk]

1. The penal industry is huge...

Its is the main reason drugs have not been legalized.

Stephen

[liberalnurse]

2. We could really reduce these stats

by making effective laws against any child abuse/molestation crimes.

First off.....Death Penalty for first offenders of child rape and any form of molestation.

[PSPS]

3. Why stop there?

By your logic, we can "really reduce these stats" by simply executing everyone convicted of anything!

[saigon68]

33. Welcome to DU

Glad to have you here. :-)

[superconnected]

26. all of my female friends have told me they've been molested

by their dads, step dads, uncles, grandpa, and moms bfs.Somewhere along the line they all got it.

I never got molested because my parents were decent and never did trust me and my sister with anyone when we were children.

Anyway, your call for blood - if actuallized and took ALL molesters, would take a whole lot of men off the map in this country.

As a woman, I say, go for it.

I won't vote for it because I won't myself support murder for vengence, but sill, hey, get rid of ALL the men that do this crap. Not just the neighbors.

[stellanoir]

4. draconian mandatory sentencing

of non violent offenses is the most heinous violation of our civil rights. With Global tracking satellites hovering over us like knats, there is absolutely no reason that most none violent criminals could be put under home confinement. It would cost far less than these privately owned Gulags where people generally lose their dignity and rehabilitation scarcely exists. And these awful companies make $30-60 grand off each prisoner each year. Ah-h-h that's far more than a lot of them were ever even capable of making in the first place. Our judiciary and our penal system are a total disaster.

Heard about a 19 year old girl who had a bozo boyfriend living with her who was dealing crystal meth. She got 25 years. Ah-h-h that 's the same amount of time someone gets for hijacking an airliner and far less than one is sentenced for manslaughter.

Now go watch CSI and sleep tight america.

[bemildred]

5. "Freedumb" is on the march in the USA. nt

[0007]

6. Private prisons are a big business these days.

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons" Fyodor Dostoyevsky

[CatWoman]

7. the prison industry provides economic sustenance to whole communities

my brother lives in a suburb of Houston, and almost everyone there works for the prison industry.

[aneerkoinos]

12. How wonderfull

No wonder US is going bankrupt.

Half the people in prison, other half guarding them and killing dark people overseas. So who's doing the productive work, like manufactoring, building and maintaining infrastructure, teaching and health-care, etc.?

US is pukingly sick society.

[thecai]

21. Manufacturing Has Moved To The Prisons

Many jobs that have not moved overseas, now operate within the prison-factories. Incarceration is highly profitable. Click on any state to view "Prison Industries";
http://www.corrections.com/links/viewlinks.asp?Cat=5
also:
http://www.doc.wa.gov/general/links.htm

[Conservativesux]

22. US Prisons: The 21st Century Slave Plantations

Land of the free ?

Ha!

[saigon68]

24. Slave Plantations-- (There are lots of NEGROES there)

Back to the old south and old black joe. What is the minority prison Population. NO JOKE------ its the MAJORITY prison population and its DISGUSTING.

[JanMichael]

8. I wonder how this compares to the the Former USSR?

link:www.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/penalcontrol.shtml|Yikes!] No that can't can be right?!

Let's just rename prisons here Gulags. Since we're as good if not better than Stalin.

[Art_from_Ark]

25. If Bill O'Lie-ly had his way, there would be real American gulags

up in Alaska. I remember reading his gulag diatribe in the op-ed page of a newspaper when I was back in the States a few years ago, and thinking that if that kind of tripe was typical of what was given major space on an op-ed page, America was in serious trouble.

[PSPS]

9. This is "ethnic cleansing" - american style

Blacks are locked up in prison in numbers far higher than their proportion of society. But this works to the advantage of republicans. These "convicted felons" are conveniently denied the right to vote in many states.

[raccoon]

29. Absolutely, the so-called "War on Drugs"

is a way of disenfranchising blacks, also a way to control the underclass, by keeping a lot of their young men locked up, and a way to demoralize blacks, by locking up their relatives for years and years.

From this angle, the powerful could call the "War on Drugs" a resounding success.

[ellenfl]

10. i guess that explains why the unemployment figures haven't gone up. eom

[Lindacooks]

11. That's what happens when the economy stinks.

More people turn to crime.

[Zorra]

13. A very common trait in nations with newly appointed fascist leaders -

Now that we have a Centralized Federal/International Police Agency with leaders hand picked by Bush, we can only expect the prison population to soar to new and glorious heights as the deadly virus of fascism blossoms:

Reflecting traditional prejudices, new laws combined traditional prejudices with the new racism of the Nazis which defined Gypsies, by race, as "criminal and asocial." Another consequence of Hitler's ruthless dictatorship in the 1930s was the arrest of political opponents and trade unionists and others the Nazis labeled "undesirables" and "enemies of the state." Many homosexuals, mostly male, were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps; under the 1935 Nazi-revised criminal code, the mere denunciation of an individual as "homosexual" could result in arrest, trial, and conviction. Jehovah's Witnesses were banned as an organization as early as April 1933, since the beliefs of this religious group prohibited them from swearing any oath to the state or serving in the German military. Their literature was confiscated, and they lost jobs, unemployment benefits, pensions, and all social welfare benefits. Many Witnesses were sent to prisons and concentration camps in Nazi Germany and their children were sent to juvenile detention homes and orphanages.

Between 1933 and 1936, thousands of people, mostly political prisoners and Jehovah's Witnesses, were imprisoned in concentration camps while several thousand German Gypsies were confined in special municipal camps. The first systematic round-ups of German and Austrian Jews occurred after Kristallnacht, when approximately 30,000 Jewish men were deported to Dachau and other concentration camps and several hundred Jewish women were sent to local jails. At the end of 1938, the waves of arrests also included several thousand German and Austrian Gypsies.

http://www.somsd.k12.nj.us/~chssocst/sswhholocaustread1.htm

[chlamor]

17. Well

your post is quite fine however the prison "problem" isn't to be blamed on Bush Co. as insidious as they are. This imprisonment phenomena is perfectly consistent with a rich American history of chaining up and cordoning off the workforce/menials and as a means of coercion and social control.

Wage slavery
Keep everyone distracted by the petty thiefs while the colossal bandits run the show and the criminal system goes unchecked.

[bin.dare]

18. right on, brother ...

... your pyramid is as true (if not truer) today as it was in 1911.

is there any possibility that most americans will get this picture?

[Tsiyu]

14. The disparity in sentencing

between black and white non-violent offenders is an absolute shame. Anyone who says there is no racism in America hasn't looked in her prisons, hasn't read the police reports and court documents, hasn't crunched the "numbers."

But those numbers represent "people." The fact that we are content to lock our neighbor away for nought may come back some day soon to bite each of the complacent on the ass...

Johnny Reb may be happy with the arrangement now. But no matter how much he Lubs his Shrub, this administration doesn't give a damn about Johnny Reb once his vote is cast. And Johnny's gonna see his big mouth get him in trouble with the Fascists, and he's gonna share a cell with his neighbors.

And then that Constitution will seem like a fine idea once again...

[chlamor]

15. nominate-another nomination?

No borders-fences

The Panopticon-The Suburb

[bin.dare]

16. some simple numbers on the incarceration industry ...

... approximately, it costs $60k per year for each person in prision, that means the cost for 2 million inmates equals $120 billion.

how many other industries are of this size? can you see why many want it privitized?

[NorthernSpy]

19. never forget how the free press has promoted the War on Drugs

Just as democracy gave the world Hitler, freedom of the press gave us the War on Drugs. From Prohibition, to Reefer Madness, to what we've got today, powerful institutions have spoken loudly and freely -- and the net result has been prisons as far as the eye can see, and inevitably a loss of personal freedom for the rest of us.

Freedom itself -- as long as freedom includes the right of powerful people to lie, defame, and foment hysteria -- is what builds gulags.

[PompatusOfLove]

20. "The Drug War" is the reason

We overtook Russia two years ago, and now have a higher percentage of our citizens in prison than any other country.

<http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0601-01.htm >

Furthermore, prisons have continued being privatized for the last 20 years.

<http://www.cfpa.org/issues/issue.cfm/issue/PrivatizingP... >

This is a frightening situation.

[dbt]

23. Any time you've got this many people in prison,

You've got too many laws. Time to start weeding out a bunch of 'em, starting with the War On Pot.

:smoke:

[genieroze]

36. The War On Pot is gonna get worse

Friday :: April 15, 2005

5 Years for Passing a Joint: Stop this Bill Now

Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner has launched his next assault on freedom. The full House Judiciary Committee is set to vote as early as next week on H.R. 1528, which creates a new group of mandatory miniumum penalties for non-violent drug offenses, including a five year penalty for passing a joint to someone who's been in drug treatment.

That's right: Passing a joint to someone who used to be in drug treatment will land you in federal prison for a minimum of five years.

The "Defending America's Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act of 2005" (H.R. 1528) was introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) on April 6, and it has already passed out of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.

We warned you about this bill last September. It's now coming home to roost. Please visit here to e-mail your U.S. representative and two U.S. senators today. Stop this bill in its tracks.


http://www.talkleft.com/new_archives/010374.html

[meganmonkey]

40. But stoners are such dangerous people!

They'd kill your kid for a joint - that's what I learned growing up in the 80's (thanks, Nancy Reagan).

Fortunately I spent much of the 90's and this decade stoned so I know better now.
:smoke:

[SheepyMcSheepster]

27. ahh.... good ole prohibition + private prison industry

at least someone is making money due to the injustice :sarcasm:

this is past rediculous.

[SOS]

28. 72% are non-violent offenders

A WPA-style jobs program for non-violent offenders would be cheaper and better for the society than the current gulag approach.
Of the violent offenders, most were drunk on alcohol.
(ABC News stats: In 86% of murder, 75% of domestic abuse and 70% of child abuse cases the offender was drunk at time of offense)

Jobs + alcohol education and rehab would empty the prisons in a hurry. But common sense isn't popular in the US.

[0007]

30. Torture in America’s prisons

This is an eye opener. 50 minutes long and well worth it!

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article8451.htm

[Laughing Mirror]

37. That's a shocker!

Brutal instruments of torture, the gassing, suffocating people in spit masks, restraint chairs, biting attack dogs, astonishing violence just like Abu Ghraib.

What they do to kids at the notorious California Youth Authority.

The toil this torture takes on inmates families and, very well represented in this report, on corrections officers too, who are victims of this brutal system as well.

Thanks for posting. This BBC 4 documentary should be shown everywhere.

[0007]

38. Your welcome, please pass it on.

[slaveplanet]

31. It's closer to 7 million

when you factor in parolees....the # is expected to double by 2015 according to the justice department....how you ask? by criminalizing everything.

http://crime.about.com/od/prison/a/corrections0407.htm

[Laughing Mirror]

35. This is true

I'm glad people are starting to pay attention to the monolithic prison industrial complex, and are starting to see it for what it really is.

[MGKrebs]

32. "Crime rate" is actually going up recently.

Here are charts from the same site used in the article. What do we see class?

[Xenotime]

34. They just need help

Most of the people in those prisons just need help. Government just turns a blind eye to them and locks them up. It's a sad shame.

[entanglement]

39. Outrageous. The prison-industrial complex

is an insidious force gnawing away at America. From being 'correctional facilities', prisons have started to exist for their own sake. There are whole prison 'towns' now. Fascists always find it easier to lock people up in prison, it is the direct result of criminalizing poverty.