Growth Rate for Jail, Prison Exceeds That For Population Growth

Federal stats released Sunday show that from June 2004 to June 2005 the nation's jail and prison population grew 2.6 percent to 2,186,230. This is more than twice the rate of annual population growth for both the US and the world, according to the US Census Bureau. (tip, pdf)

The United States has both a greater percentage of its citizens behind bars (0.736%) and more people jailed in total than any other nation in the world. (pdf) Our incarceration rate of 736 per 100,000 people handily trumps number two, Russia (at about 530/100,000). The next highest ranking western country is the UK, at number 18, with well under 200 per 100,000.

We account for only about five percent of the world’s population, but almost one in four persons incarcerated. (pdf) In fact, we have "100,000 more persons behind bars for drug offenses alone than the entire European Union has incarcerated -- and the EU is larger than the U.S. by 100 million people." (tip)

Ironically, violent crime has been declining steadily since 1994 and is now less than half that rate (51.2 per 1,000 v 21.1). And hate groups are on the increase. Go figure.

We pay a cost for our reliance on locks-and-bars -- societal and otherwise. Economists View points out that the average 2001 cost per state inmate was almost $23,000. It's a little more than that for federal inmates. That's about $55 billion a year. Many argue that much (most?) of that money could be better spent on education, detox, job training.

Charges of Racism
Black males are disproportionately represented in the prison population and serve longer terms than their white counterparts. For example, a five-year study in Indiana showed that although the percent of whites and blacks who use drugs is almost identical, black men served sentences 50 percent longer than whites.

And Leonard Pitts reports that "a black drug defendant is 48 times more likely to be jailed than a white one with the same record," according to a 2000 study co-sponsored by the Justice Department. There's more:

According to The Real War on Crime: The Report of the National Criminal Justice Commission, blacks account for 13 percent of all regular drug users but 35 percent of those arrested, 55 percent of those convicted and 74 percent of those imprisoned for drug possession. A 2004 Miami Herald report found that a judicial procedure that allows a defendant's record to be wiped clean of a felony offense is given freely to white drug dealers, rapists and child molesters. But to blacks? Not so much. And this remains true, even when adjusted for socioeconomic factors.

Critics direct their ire at the War on Drugs launched by President Reagan. In 1970, 300,000 Americans were behind bars (0.144%). In 1981, we arrested 581,000 (0.256%); by 1997 that number had reached 1.6 million (0.602%). Today it's 0.736%. Most are for non-violent crime, primarily drug offenses.

Finally, from a 2004 study from the University of Washington:

"Prison is no longer just for the most violent or incorrigible offenders. Inmates are increasingly likely to be serving time for drug offenses or property crimes," [Becky] Pettit said. "While there is enduring racial disproportionality in imprisonment, we find that the lifetime risk of incarceration is increasingly stratified by education. Over the past 30 years the risk of incarceration has grown for both blacks and whites, but has grown the fastest among men who have a high school diploma or less."

America is wringing her proverbial hands over illegal immigration and turning a blind eye to the plight of her largest minority. It's got to be a better investment of societal resources to provide opportunity for young black men in America -- to keep them in school and help them find a job -- than to throw them in jail.

Their jobless -- or hopeless -- rate makes one think of another disenchanted group of young men: young Muslims in Iraq, Iran, Palestine. When will this domestic time-bomb go off?

See Death Penalty in the US; Media and Its Protrayal of Black Americans.

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