We live in the United States of Imprisoned Americans. Think I’m over the top with that statement? Consider these facts courtesy of the Department of Justice:
On June 30, 2006–
— 2,245,189 prisoners were held in Federal or State prisons or in local jails — an increase of 2.8% from midyear 2005, less than the average annual growth of 3.4% since yearend 1995.
— there were an estimated 497 prison inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents — up from 411 at yearend 1995.
— the number of women under the jurisdiction of State or Federal prison authorities increased 4.8% from midyear 2005, reaching 111,403 and the number of men rose 2.7%, totaling 1,445,115.
At yearend 2005 there were 3,145 black male sentenced prison inmates per 100,000 black males in the United States, compared to 1,244 Hispanic male inmates per 100,000 Hispanic males and 471 white male inmates per 100,000 white males.
No matter how you slice it that’s a lot of people which we incarcerate every year. Indeed, outside of Axis of Evil member North Korea, that’s the highest incarceration rate in the world. In total number of prisoners, we have the most people behind bars in the world, edging out China by at least 500,000, despite the fact that China’s population is over four (4) times larger than our own. Of course, to reach these records we had to imprison people for lots of non-violent crimes in our endless war on drugs. And to make room for all the people we convict under our draconian drug laws we had to build more prisons. Lot’s more prisons.
A new report shows that prison construction across the United States has undergone an unprecedented boom in the last quarter-century, as the federal and state governments have jailed increasing numbers of people for longer and longer periods.
The report, titled The New Landscape of Imprisonment: Mapping America’s Prison Expansion, was released by the Urban Institute in April. The study focused on the changes in the last 25 years in the 10 states with the largest prison increases—California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, and Texas. Entire communities are now dependent economically on the mushrooming prisons.
Of course with all this prison building has come a fair share of that notable conservative principle: privatization. Indeed, the number of private companies running prisons for profit has never been higher, being at least a $35 billion dollar a year industry. And with growing numbers of prisons, private or publicly managed, and a growing lack of accountability has come — surprise — a growing amount of abuse and violations of human rights:
(cont.)
According to the Sentencing Project, during the 25-year prison boom 40 state prison systems were under some form of court order for brutality, overcrowding, poor food, or lack of medical care.
Methods of torture and human degradations like those recently revealed in Iraq have been rampant in U.S. jails, according to a May 8 report by Reuters and another one the same day in the New York Times. Both cite corrections officials, inmates, and human rights advocates as their source.
Yet, a recent study has revealed that despite the vast numbers of people we send to the Big House each year in America, many of them for non-violent drug offenses, we aren’t getting much bang for the bucks we spend on our prison industrial system. In fact, crime rates have been little affected by the number of prisoners we keep locked up, at a cost that is enormously wasteful of our tax dollars:
The US prison population has risen eight-fold since 1970, with little impact on crime but at great cost to the taxpayer, researchers say. […]
The Unlocking America report, which was published [by JFA Institute, a Washington-based criminal justice research group] on Monday, also advocated changing terms of parole and finding alternatives to prison as part of a major overhaul of the US justice system.
“There is no evidence that keeping people in prison longer makes us any safer,” said JFA president James Austin. […]
The report said that US crime rates, which have been in decline since the 1990s, are about the same as those for 1973.
It says the incarceration rate has soared because sentences have got longer and those who violate parole or probation are more likely to be given prison terms.
The report said that every year hundreds of thousands of Americans are sent to jail “for crimes that pose little if any danger or harm to society”.
Of course, as long as there is a buck to be made by big business, I doubt we can expect any change in the way we do our “prison business.” Not when the stock prices of companies like Corrections Corporation of America has been rising on reports that contracts for new immigration detention facilities will be awarded to the private sector by the federal government:
The stock of Corrections Corp. has climbed to $53.77 from $42.50, an increase of about 27 percent, since February when President Bush proposed adding to spending on immigrant detention.
Geo’s stock rose about 68 percent in the period, to $39.24 a share from $23.36.
This is one place where we are clearing pouring our money down the drain. Not with government spending but by privatizing government functions, allowing the corporate sector to grab our tax dollars like pigs at a trough, and by trying to solve every social problem like drug abuse with harsh, Daddy style authoritarian punishments. Can we stop it? Not unless someone makes it a point to fight the prison industry lobbyists in Congress and pushes through legislation repealing our insane laws which lock non-violent offenders and immigrants up by the bucket load, and also take steps to reverse Bush’s gulagization of our nation.
You see any chance of that happening any time soon?
Me neither.
