Growing Prison Population

[Midwest_Doc]

States Face Growing Prison Population

By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - America's prison population grew again in 2002 despite a declining crime rate, costing the federal government and states an estimated $40 billion a year at a time of rampant budget shortfalls.

The inmate population in 2002 of more than 2.1 million represented a 2.6 percent increase over 2001, according to a report released Sunday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Preliminary FBI (news - web sites) statistics showed a 0.2 percent drop in overall crime during the same span.

Experts say mandatory sentences, especially for nonviolent drug offenders, are a major reason inmate populations have risen for 30 years. About one of every 143 U.S. residents was in the federal, state or local custody at year's end.

"The nation needs to break the chains of our addiction to prison, and find less costly and more effective policies like treatment," said Will Harrell, executive director of the Texas American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites). "We need to break the cycle."


EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

[ZenLefty]

1. Hi Midwest_Doc

When posting in LBN, please provide an internet link to the news source. Also, please only excerpt 2-3 paragraphs, not the entire article. Thanks.

ZenLefty
DU Moderator

[DulceDecorum]

2. The Company Store

Amendment XIII
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted....
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.amendmentxiii.html

In 1934, President Roosevelt established Federal Prison Industries (FPI) as a government-owned corporation. FPI was given special "MANDATORY SOURCE" status in the government procurement process, forcing government agencies in need of a product to purchase that product from FPI. No consideration can be given to a private sector competitor unless that agency asks for an exception from FPI's monopoly. FPI produces nearly 300 products for FORCED SALE to federal agencies. In 2001, FPI sales to the federal government totaled $678 million.

In efforts to expand its monopoly, FPI wants to sell services in the commercial marketplace, despite questionable legal authority to do so. Private sector companies and their employees will now have to compete with the federal government. Facilities -- paid for by tax dollars that use prison workers who are paid $1.35 per hour or less -- will be competing with Main Street businesses, which are required to pay prevailing wages and provide benefits for their employees....
http://www.uschamber.com/government/issues/privatization/fpi.htm

[R Hickey]

3. 4 paragraphs only, due to copywrite laws, and provide link.

But yes, prisons are becomming a budget buster in most states, costing more than universities. The drug war is an expensive failed social experiment, like alchohol probabition.

Republicans want bigger prisons, smaller schools. Democrats want the opposite.

[GOPisEvil]

4. One result of a poor economy is a rising prison population...

...I'm guessing that when we get a Democrat in office, and the economy improves for the lower and middle classes, prison populations will stabilize. (After we indict the present administration, of course. ;-) )

[ze_dscherman]

8. But then the U.S. must be the poorest country world wide

The U.S. features the highest inmate quota (700 per 100.000) world wide, since it just recently overtook Russia. This is about 5-10 times as many as in West European states.

http://www.cjcj.org/press/inmate_population.html

[GreenArrow]

10. I wouldn't necessarily count on it...

http://www.acs.ohio-state.edu/researchnews/archive/prispop.htm

and

http://www.cjcj.org/pubs/clinton/clinton.html

California, with a Democratic controlled legislature doensn't seem to want to change its drug sentencing laws, even though it would save the state a ton of moola. They'd rather appear "tough" on crime, I guess. Instead, they are cutting education and social services.

[Tripper11]

5. I heard this story or one like it on NPR late last week

and the one quote that stood out for me on that story was, "at least 700 people a week are incarcirated."

My intial thought was why not just jail everyone and then slowly let "the good ones" out?

It ridiculous!

[JayS]

6. I wonder what drug treatment alternative law in Texas they are...

...talking about. The only one I know of that passed recently will not take effect until September 1st of this year.


"Texas, for example, recently passed a drug treatment alternative law and saw its prison population remain virtually unchanged from 2001 to 2002. Ohio, which revised its sentencing and parole guidelines in the late 1990s, had its prison and jail population rise just 0.8 percent last year compared with 1.9 percent for the Midwest as a whole."

[bemildred]

7. Heck, this could lead to budget problems.

Keeping all those people in jail is expensive.

[Rex]

9. Yes yes, we must lock up those dam pot smokers!

Well, lock up the lower income ones! I mean, everyone knows that if you want to get high, drink some (govt taxed) booze!

[ichiro99]

11. Prior to the PNAC taking up their fairly acquired War Department ...

and trudging off to adventure abroad, they practiced on lower-tier groups domestically -- particularly through their prison-industrial complex, concentrating on blacks as brunt for their brand of humor.

Old lynching traditions, previous plantation and workhouse scams, each writ large in Americans' hard-knocks history. After all, this lot's the same sickboys who hated Elvis, Harlem's heyday, comic books ...now it's preschool programs and patriotic questioning that's gotten the monarchists seeing red.

Precious little change. As ever, generous with their circuses, stingy with any bread. Prisons to the thugs are the ideal bit of entrepreneurship, in the same way the decayed Gotham in 'Gangs of New York' is the illuminated ones' take on adequate civitas.