2006: America Increases as Prison Nation

By Jeralyn, Section Inmates and Prisons
Posted on Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 12:52:14 PM EST
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The 2005-2006 statistics are in. America increased its prison population by the greatest amount since 2000.

The United States, which has the most prisoners of any country in the world, last year recorded the largest increase in the number of people in prisons and jails since 2000, the Justice Department reported on Wednesday.

It said the nation's prison and jail populations increased by more than 62,000 inmates, or 2.8 percent, to about 2,245,000 inmates in the 12-month period that ended on June 30, 2006. It was the biggest jump in numbers and percentage change in six years.

Reasons for the increase:

Criminal justice experts have attributed the record U.S. prison population to tough sentencing laws, record numbers of drug offenders and high crimes rates.

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2006: America Increases as Prison Nation | 28 comments (28 topical)

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Of course (none / 0) (#1)
by Wile ECoyote on Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 12:59:47 PM EST

the population is the largest is has ever been. It can't be a contributing factor though.

The United States (none / 0) (#9)
by Edger on Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 07:15:48 PM EST

not only has the largest number of prisoners in the world... it has the highest rate per 100,000 of the national population of prisoners in the world.*

1 United States of America     737
2     French Guiana/Guyane (France)     630
3     Russian Federation     624
4     St. Kitts and Nevis     604
5     Virgin Islands (USA)     549
6     Cuba     c.531

*figures are from 2003 - perhaps someone can supply current figures


Though I don't have the hard numbers (5.00 / 1) (#11)
by sarcastic unnamed one on Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 11:41:02 PM EST

my googling earlier today has suggested that the US is also the world's leader in criminal activity - as well as the world's leader in the number of possible criminal offenses on the books and also incarceratable offenses.

iow, part of the reason for us having about 5x the incarceration rate of "many" other western industrialized nations is the fact that we like to take chances. We like to "bend" the rules. As a society.

Sometimes you win the lottery, sometimes you roll snake eyes.


I told (none / 0) (#14)
by Wile ECoyote on Fri Jun 29, 2007 at 10:00:21 AM EST

you the largest population we have ever had was not a factor, lol. It is interesting to note the socialist ideal state of Cuba is no. six.


: I noticed that. (none / 0) (#16)
by Edger on Fri Jun 29, 2007 at 10:09:16 AM EST

I guess that makes Cuba six times worse than the US.

Are you sure that these rates are comparable? (none / 0) (#21)
by JSN on Fri Jun 29, 2007 at 03:41:05 PM EST

Most of the figures I have found for other countries give the prison population only. If the country has a federal police force the population given would most likely be combined prison & jail populations. It is difficult to find out what jail populations are for other countries and some of them have huge jails. The US incarceration rate you list is for the combined prisons and jail population.

The press and others use jail and prison as if they were the same thing but they have different functions. 95%+ of the prison inmates are serving at least a one year sentence for a felony (in some cases an aggravated misdemeanor) the other 5% are pretrial and federal detainees.

About 75% of the the persons booked into jail are released after initial appearance before a magistrate and about a third of the rest are serving a jail sentence with a maximum length of a year (most are shorter than two weeks). Most of the jail crowding is caused by detainees waiting for their case to be processed by the court. There are both pretrial detainees and those held for some type of noncompliance (such as a parole/probation or non contact order violation and failure to whatever).


Substantiate (none / 0) (#26)
by Edger on Sun Jul 01, 2007 at 06:54:04 AM EST

You've offered nothing but speculations.

The numbers in tha table above that I quoted from are for "prisons", not "jails".

If you have anything factual to dispute the numbers take it up with the The International Centre for Prison Studies at The School of Law, King's College, University of London - they produced the data above.


BJS Bulletin "Prison & Jail Inmates (none / 0) (#27)
by JSN on Sun Jul 01, 2007 at 07:50:40 AM EST

at Midyear 2005" gives a combined US prison and jail population 2.186 million and an incarceration rate of 726. The prison population was 1.438 million giving an incarceration rate of 478 and the jail population was 0.747 million giving an incarceration rate of 248.

The number you gave for the US was 737 which is based on the combined prison and jail populations. In spite of what you said I think that some of the other countries listed have federal police and their incarceration rates would include both prisons and jails.


I'm not seeing what point you're trying to make. (none / 0) (#28)
by Edger on Sun Jul 01, 2007 at 08:58:28 AM EST

: The author of the international report (none / 0) (#29)
by JSN on Thu Jul 05, 2007 at 02:16:58 PM EST

on prison populations is Roy Walmsley a consultant for the EU Institute for Crime Prevention & Control. His report was released by the UK Home Office
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r188.pdf
Walmsley make the same points I did about comparison between prisons that hold sentenced prisoners and pretrial detention facilities (jails). Zambia has the highest incarceration rate of any county in the world but Walmsley correctly excluded it because most of the inmates are suspected of being involved in genocide and have not been formally charged. China only reported the number of sentenced prisoners and they also have jails because there are people in China who have disappeared and then reappeared saying they had been jailed.
The second point is that a county with a federal system has one criminal code, court system, justice department, department of correction who has jurisdiction over both prison and jails and a small number of federal police agencies. The United States has 51 criminal codes, 51 court systems and almost 3000 prosecuting attorney offices. We also have the Bureau of Prisons, 50 Departments of Correction and 3000 county jails. I don't know how many police departments there are the estimates range from 18,000 to 22,000. I don't think it makes any sense to compare our combined national prison and jail population with that of a county with a federal system.
Sorry it took me so long to respond I was working on some other projects.

I think the cj experts.... (none / 0) (#2)
by kdog on Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 01:15:28 PM EST

left of an obvious cause, at least to this layman.

The fact that the federal and state legislatures have criminalized so much behavior. It's not just sentencing laws, but too many damn laws in general.

Legalized Slavery (none / 0) (#3)
by Electa on Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 01:53:28 PM EST

is what the numbers reflect...legalized slavery. What peeves me off to no end is when I hear people, like O'Reilly and the likes say such idiotic things as 70% of African-American households are headed by single women. Stop putting our men in prison and we'll fill the houses up with mommies and dads. Give our men decent paying jobs and they won't be tempted to sling drugs. Stop dumping this poison in our communities and the prisons won't fill up with drug users and petty dealers. The disproportionate incarceration rate of African American men & women is nothing short of genocide and apartheid. It's time for the global community to get involved in this humanitarian crisis.

Ok (none / 0) (#4)
by Wile ECoyote on Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 02:13:17 PM EST

How should the global community get involved with this crisis?


The same way it (none / 0) (#5)
by Electa on Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 02:33:12 PM EST

get's involved in every other humanitarian crisis. Begin with an awareness campaign to bring attention of this inhuman treatment to the world community. Get UN Resolutions passed, propose economic sanctions, boycott companies that do business with the US including US companies. America is not exempt from human rights violations and she should be brought to judgement by the global community for the 400 years of slavery and it's continuance in the name of incarceration. The US constitution itself promotes slavery.


Well (none / 0) (#7)
by Wile ECoyote on Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 03:34:33 PM EST

lets hear a UN resolution you would propose.


: WEC: I haven't the slightest idea (none / 0) (#8)
by Electa on Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 04:16:07 PM EST

where to start but just found a sample UN Resolution to jumpstart the thought process. What I am willing to do is start a campaign to gain interest and support for such an effort. I've been thinking of it since I became aware, from personal experience, of the incessant and disproportionate incarceration of African-Americans in this country escpecially those serving ungodly sentences under the draconian US Sentencing Guidelines w/o chance of parole.

Free society? (none / 0) (#6)
by Lora on Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 02:44:50 PM EST

The United States, which has the most prisoners of any country in the world...

Orwellian definition of a "free society?"

It is (none / 0) (#15)
by Wile ECoyote on Fri Jun 29, 2007 at 10:02:29 AM EST

obvious the only answer is for the gov't to restrict freedoms more. If people have less choice, then less chances to get themselves in trouble by making bad choices. We need to let the gov't make the choices for us!


Bad choices? Or... (none / 0) (#18)
by Lora on Fri Jun 29, 2007 at 01:49:01 PM EST

Bad laws, selective enforcement, and don't forget the profit angle with the privatizing of prisons...?


You (none / 0) (#19)
by Wile ECoyote on Fri Jun 29, 2007 at 02:31:56 PM EST

are correct, It can't be anyone's fault. No personal responsibility required in the US today. It is always someone else at fault.


So (none / 0) (#20)
by Edger on Fri Jun 29, 2007 at 02:34:23 PM EST

What are you doing about it?


: Wringing (none / 0) (#22)
by Wile ECoyote on Fri Jun 29, 2007 at 06:44:06 PM EST

my hands and appearing concerned like everyone else here.
Either that of staying out of jail.

More Republicans are in jail (none / 0) (#10)
by Robert McClelland on Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 09:32:21 PM EST

Are you sure the increase isn't simply due to all the Republicans going to jail these days?

: It would not surprise me to find that (none / 0) (#13)
by JSN on Fri Jun 29, 2007 at 08:25:16 AM EST

most of our county jail inmates are not registered to vote. If they are registered it is fairly easy for them to vote by absentee ballot if they are a long term detainee. Someone held until initial appearance probably can vote if they are released but they would probably lose their opportunity to vote if they are detained.
I was surprised to learn that the law makes provisions for the homeless to register to vote. They can use the street intersection closest to where they usually sleep as their address.
We don't have a lot of Republicans in this county but it would take a very large jail to put them all in jail on election day. We could charge them with being a pain-in-the-rear in a public place.

Imprisonment Also Helps Unemployment Statistics! (none / 0) (#17)
by Red Shovel on Fri Jun 29, 2007 at 12:55:37 PM EST

Don't forget that persons who are incarcerated are not considered to be part of the eligible work force, and thus, they are not counted as "unemployed" when the Department of Commerce / Bureau of Labor Statistics does the math.

I did my own math back in the dot-com "boom years" and found that what was then being touted as the declining unemployment rate was actually rising slightly, if you included the roughly 2 million (at the time) people behind bars as eligible to work but unemployed.

Prison labor also has the salutary effect of lowering costs for corporations, depressing wages, and at the same time improving the unemployment rate.

And finally, don't forget that there are now a number of companies (Corrections Corporation of America and Wackenhut, to name just two) who make a per head profit in their operation of private prisons.

If the state privatizes its prisons, the companies that operate those prisons then have a direct profit motive to do whatever they can (through lobbying, for instance) to ensure that the prison population continues to increase.

If that isn't the definition of a perverse incentive, I don't know what is.

Slightly OT (none / 0) (#23)
by Claw on Sat Jun 30, 2007 at 11:34:43 AM EST

Electa,
You mentioned legalized slavery in an earlier post. You may be interested to know that just after the 13th amendment (abolishing slavery), some Southern states passed laws geared toward incarcerating newly freed slaves. The laws were so successful that, because we lacked the facilities to incarcerate massive numbers of people, an ingenious plan was devised: prisoners would be allowed to work on plantations instead of being in jail...often, shockingly, the same plantations they had recently left as newly freed slaves. This continued until the 1920's. Apologies if you already knew this.

JSN (none / 0) (#24)
by Claw on Sat Jun 30, 2007 at 11:38:53 AM EST

Many states have laws that strip felons of their right to vote. If they are long term detainees it's quite likely that they are, or have been, convicted of a felony.

: Good point. (none / 0) (#25)
by JSN on Sat Jun 30, 2007 at 11:48:21 AM EST

In our state the voting rights are restored but I think they have to complete parole before that occurs.