Land of the Free
1 OUT OF EVERY 136 U.S. RESIDENTS NOW BEHIND BARS
WASHINGTON, Associated Press - U.S. prisons and jails added more than 1,000 inmates each week last year, putting almost 2.2 million people, or one in every 136 U.S. residents, behind bars.
Prisons accounted for about two-thirds of all inmates, or 1.4 million, while the other third, nearly 750,000, were in local jails, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Jails often hold inmates for state or federal systems, as well as people who have yet to begin serving a sentence.
The jail population is increasingly unconvicted. Judges are more reluctant to release people pretrial. 62 percent of people in jails have not been convicted, meaning many of them are awaiting trial.
Men were 10 times to 11 times more likely than women to be in prison or jail, but the number of women behind bars was growing at a faster rate than men. An estimated 11.9 percent of all black men were incarcerated, compared with 3.9 percent of Hispanic males and 1.7 percent of white males.
WASHINGTON, Associated Press - U.S. prisons and jails added more than 1,000 inmates each week last year, putting almost 2.2 million people, or one in every 136 U.S. residents, behind bars.
Prisons accounted for about two-thirds of all inmates, or 1.4 million, while the other third, nearly 750,000, were in local jails, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Jails often hold inmates for state or federal systems, as well as people who have yet to begin serving a sentence.
The jail population is increasingly unconvicted. Judges are more reluctant to release people pretrial. 62 percent of people in jails have not been convicted, meaning many of them are awaiting trial.
Men were 10 times to 11 times more likely than women to be in prison or jail, but the number of women behind bars was growing at a faster rate than men. An estimated 11.9 percent of all black men were incarcerated, compared with 3.9 percent of Hispanic males and 1.7 percent of white males.
posted by chuck at 5/21/2006 09:13:00 PM
2 Comments:
aburdly, the majority of those in jail are in for either pedaling illegal drugs or using illegal drugs. legalize weed and the prison population would plummet. or maybe we could go back to Prohibition, criminalize the distribution and use of booze, put everyone in jail and then we could all pretend we were really free.
interesting topic, dad.
what spurred this research?
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