1 in 100 US Adults Behind Bars

POSTED BY Raleigh-Elizabeth Smith, 29 February 2008

Quoting the NYT:

For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report.
Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.
Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.
The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that only one in 355 white women between the ages of 35 and 39 are behind bars but that one in 100 black women are.

Repeat: one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.

Now go back a few months to Max Blumenthal elaborating to us on America's quiet war on young black men:

Max: I think Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are really distractions from the real question, which is: Is America willing to embrace women's rights and is America willing to embrace black men on their own terms? Which means talking about issues like abortion, which democrats are scared to talk about, and issues like prison, which Democrats, particularly at the state level; a lot are in the pocket of the prison guard's union. So you have an enormous amount of black males basically warehoused in prisons for non-violent crimes, over 50 percent of the federal prison population is in jail for nonviolent drug offenses, what's basically going on is a war on young black men.

It's a quiet war that everyone's afraid to talk about, and America is not, I don't know if America's ready to resolve this war in a just fashion. And Barack Obama's election isn't going to do it, if anything, it's just going to be a way of papering over what mainstream America's opinions are of black males. And I'm speaking as a white Jew.

And speaking in New York, no less, where we spend more money putting people behind bars than we do rehabilitating them. And we're the only ones facing this kind of problem. From BlogCritics:

This is a greater number of people than the combined populations of Washington, D.C., Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Denver, Colorado, and Seattle, Washington. The United States’ prison population exceeds that of any other country in the world – including China, a country with over 1.3 billion residents.

In 2007, the states spent over $44 billion on the incarcerated. After adjusting for 2007 dollars, that’s a tin cup-rattling 127 percent increase since 1987. Currently, this works out to almost $19,000 per prisoner per year.

For the same period, the adjusted spending on higher education climbed 21 percent. Due to recent overhauls in financial aid, the United States could send their entire criminal population to Harvard for a four-year degree and still spend less money per prisoner per year. For those currently making less than $180,000 a year, the cost of a Harvard education is $18,000 per person per year.

Who needs education! Why don't we just leave them rotting in prison? McCain, Clinton, and Obama have yet to make public statements on the study's results, but I'm hoping someone will come out and say the obvious: let's try schoolin' em. Or at least giving them good work while they're there. Except the DOJ wants to take that, too.

A great story surfaced this morning out of Glen Falls, NY where correctional officers are rallying to protect their inmates' right to work:
WILTON -- Correctional officers will rally today in opposition to the proposed closing of Camp McGregor, a minimum security section of the McGregor Correctional Facility in Wilton.

The New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, along with local officials, will meet at 3 p.m. at the 1000 McGregor Road site to protest the proposed closing, announced earlier this month by Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s office. The organization represents 56 employees at the camp.

Closing the camp will save the state an estimated $4.2 million annually. It would also save the state from spending $310,000 on necessary infrastructure improvements like masonry repair and an updated fire alarm.
But what they're cutting out may not be worth it. Without the inmates' work, correctional officers say work on the town could go to pot:
Though job loss could be minimal, Kirk Woodcock, Wilton’s highway superintendent for the last 21 years, said he fears losing the free work inmates provide the town could lead to deteriorating maintenance.

Crews of eight work three days a week for the town, cleaning parks, cemeteries and ditches of garbage.

"Maybe we’ll send out the crews, collect all the trash and send it to the governor’s office and then he’ll understand what they do," said Woodcock, who is also on a McGregor advisory board.
And now there's a more national concern. Inmates do more than just clean up trash - they make Kevlar vests for the Army, some even handle 401k administrative work. And cutting these jobs doesn't just mean there won't be someone doing that work - it also means there's more time for trouble on prison grounds. From NPR:
Federal correctional officers are gathering outside the Justice Department on Wednesday to protest budget cuts and cutbacks to the federal inmate work program. The officers say it's the only program they have left to keep inmates out of trouble.
Hard work and a calm prison yard... oh yeah, definitely a recipe for disaster there.