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More Prisoners (The Non-Secret Kind) Than Ever
A report released today by the Department of Justice shows that the U.S. correctional population (those in jail, prison, probation or on parole) now constitutes fully 3 percent of the U.S. adult population. That's 7 million people, which works out to be one in every 32 Americans.
The report’s findings offer a bleak assessment of state and federal prison systems. Federal prisons are running 34 percent over capacity while several states including South Dakota, Kentucky and Montana saw their inmate populations increase by 10 percent or more.
For women and African Americans the findings are even worse. The number of women in federal and state prisons rose by 2.6 percent (compared to 1.9 percent for men) and 8.1 percent of black men between the ages of 25-29 are now in prison.
—Amaya Rivera
Posted by Mother Jones on 11/30/06 at 11:18 AM | E-mail | Print | Digg | de.licio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Yahoo! MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Netscape | Google |
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And what is the reason for this? The drug war. Ever since we began the so-called "all out offensive" described by Richard Nixon, America has seen its prison population grow to be the largest in the world, even on a per capita basis. About half of the people in prison are there because of some drug-related offense, usually possession.
And as for the huge minority (especially black) population in jail, that can be traced to the drug war as well. For example, about 80% of the people that use crack cocaine are white or Hispanic. However, about 75% of the people that get arrested for crack-related offenses are black.
The sad truth is that the drug laws are racist in origin and racist in application.
Will we ever end this ridiculous drug war?
Posted by: Russell on 11/30/06 at 1:52 PM