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.
A pet peeve of mine is a lack of courage by elected officials to use the pardon power.
Clinton pardoned 2000 +- on his way out and people screamed. He should have pardoned 200 THOUSAND. We have 2,500,000 in prison and only 2000 are deserving? C’mon.
As Bush goes out he will pardon 5,000 of his fellow war criminals and the yelling will last a day. He won’t pardon any felons though.
And that will be the real crime.
nalbar
Of course, when full privitization occurs, it will become profitable to keep more prisoners locked up for longer periods of time.
Thanks for bringing this disgrace to the foreground. I have put these 2002 statistics from the Canadian Council on Social Development up before, Twenty Five Indicators of Social Development, but they confirm what you are saying. These crime stats are adjusted for population size.
—————————-Canada USA Sweden
CRIME
Hillary and Obama and the modern Democratic party are a huge part of the problem. They let America become a police state to rehabilitate their “soft on crime” stereotype. It was a huge political and policy mistake.
Just look what they did to the people from the black community–the community disproportionately affected by our police state. Nothing. In fact, they sold out these communities. They give lip service saying they care then promptly proceed to get “tough on crime” so they don’t look weak. The strategists tell Clinton and Obama how smart they are by preempting the Republican attack on them for being weak on crime. After all, why spend political capital on poor people that don’t vote and are often disenfranchised.
You just watch. Against a “tough on crime” Republican candidate like Rudy both Clinton and Obama will go out of their way to selll out the black community and the go after the prison-industrial complex campaign funds.
America is #1 baby! And Clinton and Obama will do their part to make any rational discussion of our police state taboo. They will sell out those of us that are horrified that America is a police state.
Do a quick test. Look at how Clinton will treat a “lock’ em up” rabid police state right-winger with respect (by seriously entertaining his “arguments”) but if a real liberal brings up the police state she will treat that liberal with contempt. I gurantee it. Clinton hates liberals and sucks up to fascists. It’s disgusting, really.
This is why the U.S. will never have a rational drug policy. There is too much profit in having an irrational one.
It is just the same simple but brilliant old scam that we see time and again.
There is no long term future to commercializing the prison systems as a growth industry in the United States. America traditionally prides itself on being a kindly, merciful, caring, religious nation, but its hypocritical duplicitous nature is becoming hideously unveiled before the entire world. The pernicious social infection of institutionalized national racism has been harnessed by wall street business interests to promote a burgeoning penal industry destined to replace American jobs lost to Chinese production lines and the collapsing American automobile industry.
Southern sterilization of Negro females was tried at the beginning of the 20th century, but failed in large part because Negro parents would not let their daughters go to the hospitals, even if the child was lingering close to death’s door.
A new tactic to reduce the African-American population was initiated in the middle of the 20th century in the form of corporatist narcotic traffic. Complicity between government and organized crime at the highest level allowed this traffic to flourish for decades, and serious efforts to rein it in only started when it was discovered (in the 1980’s) that it was no longer confined to inner-city ghettos, but had metastasized into the previously isolated majority white communities. It was at this time that a serious war on drugs was begun by the US government. Up until this time the government’s war on drugs was mainly an expensive showplace sham strictly for PR purposes.
This new war on drugs had an emergency feel to it, as it now had become a desperate attempt to save the white youth of American from the scrouge of addiction. The cornerstone of this new war on drugs is a policy, the logic of which is racially biased toward the arrest and conviction of African-American users (junkies). The assumption of this policy is that this group of addicts constituted a primary financial resource base for international drug trafficking cartels. This new philosophy reasoned that if you can deny this financial resource to the illegal drug industry that it will at least slow the spread of drug traffic into the major white communities. So the implementation of this policy mandated local authorities to lock all black junkies and then instruct the courts to throw away the key!
The implementation of this policy as the Steven D notes has caused an explosion in the building of new prisons, and under the Republicans it has caused a surge toward the privatization of penal institutions.
Why is this policy doomed to catastrophic failure? Because, the racism which dominates the mind set of the American power structure blinds the minds of the policy makers. The principle and biggest financial resource available to the illegal drug cartels is from white middle and upper class Americans. To be sure black junkies beg, borrow and steal to meet the needs of their addiction, but the actual sales receipts from this sector has been over-hyped in TV dramas and Hollywood movies (going all the way back to the Blackxploitation hit “Superfly”) and is minor compared with the actual sales receipts from addicted white people. This class of white addicts are essentially invisible as they exhibit the appearance of stability, and go to work and participate normally in society every day.
The second reason this policy is doomed to failure can be found in the unique state of the world today. America has created more enemies throughout the world than at any other time in history. The enemy is well aware of the racist incarceration rate exploding throughout the country, and know that if these men are in jail, its pretty much a certainty that they won’t be with American troops on the battlefield. This fact coupled with the six year drain on American military resources by the war in Iraq, is tempting to the enemy indeed. The real enemy in this case is China, and contrary to what the Wall Street wealthy propagandize about their beloved trading/business partner, China is watching and her moves will come when she believes we are incapable of response (due in large to domestic collapse). In the mind of the Chinese government the Cold War is not over and domination of America remains the primary goal. Further, the Chinese mind is inscrutable and one cannot predict her actions, but one thing is sure China is watching.
HMMM, the last two sentences of your post;
” In the mind of the Chinese government the Cold War is not over and domination of America remains the primary goal. Further, the Chinese mind is inscrutable and one cannot predict her actions, but one thing is sure China is watching.”
I am not certain it is consistant to put up a post about racism and then end it with; ‘the Chinese mind is in inscrutable’.
Also ‘the real enemy is China’ was written earlier.
It just sounds to me you should look a little inward before you point your finger.
nalbar