Pew Center: more than 1% of USA is in prison
Three decades of growth in America’s prison
population has quietly nudged the nation across a
sobering threshold: for the first time, more than one
in every 100 adults is now confined in an American
jail or prison. According to figures gathered and
analyzed by the Pew Public Safety Performance
Project, the number of people behind bars in the
United States continued to climb in 2007, saddling
cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill
afford and failing to have a clear impact either on
recidivism or overall crime.
For some groups, the incarceration numbers are
especially startling. While one in 30 men between
the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black
males in that age group the figure is one in nine.
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/One%20in%20100.pdf
Actually, the Prison-Industrial Complex might be even better than the Military-Industrial Complex at the task of maintaining social hierarchy.
Consider the similarities with Rome. As the Empire declined, it forced children to enter their parents’ professions. The stigma of imprisonment enacts a similar restriction on ghetto dwellers: if one is born poor, one is likely to stay poor.
February 29, 2008 at 9:42 am
Here’s my choice:
Try and fry every single violent criminal you can get your hands on… AFTER you’ve restructured society so that half its population doesn’t live in the shit. When we’ve got no billionaires and no homeless people, healthcare clothing housing and education for all, and an economic system that doesn’t terribly favor the lucky (whether with wealthy parents, or brains or anything else) at the excruciating expense of the unlucky, then torturing all violent criminals to death is just fine with me. But there won’t be many of them.
mnuez
March 2, 2008 at 6:08 am
Restructuring society to uplift the impoverished is a mighty tall order. It’s a noble goal, but I don’t see a first step.
March 10, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Perhaps devoting some of the $44 billion we spend yearly to keep these people behind bars can instead be used for rehabilitation.