[Peace-discuss] prison industry

[E. Wayne Johnson]

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2007 
<http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/2007/BJS08004.htm>
ONE IN EVERY 31 U.S. ADULTS WAS IN A PRISON OR JAIL OR ON PROBATION OR 
PAROLE AT THE END OF LAST YEAR

            WASHINGTON - The U.S. adult correctional population -- 
incarcerated or in the community -- reached 7.2 million men and women, 
an increase of 159,500 during the year, the Justice Department's Bureau 
of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today in a new report. About 3.2 
percent of the U.S. adult population, or 1 in every 31 adults, was in 
the nation's prisons or jails or on probation or parole at the end of 2006.

            The number of men and women who were being supervised on 
probation or parole in the United States at year-end 2006 reached 5 
million for the first time, an increase of 87,852 (or 1.8 percent) 
during the year.  A separate study found that on December 31, 2006, 
there were 1,570,861 inmates under state and federal jurisdiction, an 
increase of 42,932 (or 2.8 percent) in 2006.

            During 2006 the number of inmates under state jurisdiction 
rose by 37,504 (2.8 percent). The number of prisoners under federal 
jurisdiction rose by 5,428 (2.9 percent).

            In 2006 the number of prisoners in the 10 states with the 
largest prison populations increased by 3.2 percent, which was more than 
three times the average annual growth rate (0.9 percent) in these states 
from 2000 through 2005. These states accounted for 65 percent of the 
overall increase in the U.S. prison population during 2006. The federal 
system remained the largest prison system with 193,046 inmates under its 
jurisdiction.

            At year-end 2006, state prisons were operating between 98 
percent and 114 percent of capacity,
compared to between 100 percent and 115 percent in 2000. This trend 
indicates that prison populations are increasing at the same rate as 
expansion rates.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/2007/BJS08004.htm

Stuart Levy wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 12:19:08AM -0600, E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
>   
>> It's really a lot of leaping to a lot of conclusions about what you think 
>> that I really think. :-)
>> But a lively discussion is good.
>>
>>     
>  [...]
>   
>> I do believe that able-bodied persons who are imprisoned should work for
>> their keep rather than have the full burden of their provisioning placed on
>> the backs of those not incarcerated.  It seems to me to be more immoral and
>> unfair to have them waste their lives in incarceration than it to impress
>> them into productive service.  I do think that we have too many people
>> uselessly and meaninglessly imprisoned in this country wasting their useless
>> and meaningless lives and I suspect that the majority of them should be
>> freed.
>>     
>
> A problem is that, once the prison system becomes powerful enough (as it long
> since has here in the US, at least), people get to be imprisoned *because*
> the system needs more prisoners (for cheap labor, support for the prison
> industry, giving the political impression that crime will not be tolerated...)
> not necessarily because they've done something so wrong that the society
> needs them locked away.
>
> (Larry Niven has a cute SF story along these lines.  Once organ
> transplantation becomes widely available and a key to a long and healthy
> life, committing repeated parking violations becomes a capital offense.)
>
>   
>> I am persuaded that we are all too quick to incarcerate in this country and
>> the incarceration does little to provide the "Corrections" that are
>> advertised by that peculiar line of business.
>>     
>
> Hear, hear.
>
> I don't know whether penitentiaries were ever seriously intended for
> their inmates to be penitent (as they were originally named for),
> but they surely aren't now.
>
> Reform of the criminal justice system -- including promotion of 
> of restorative justice as opposed to the current US norm of
> retributive justice -- is a key activity of the proposed
> Department of Peace.
>
>
>   

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