America Leads the World In Prisoners

Did you know that August 11th is Alcatraz Day. It is a day that commemorates, ( an event surprisingly worthy of greeting cards) the arrival of the first prisoners in 1934 to be incarcerated on Alcatraz. While Alcatraz is certainly a part of Americana, it is unfortunate that we would celebrate the incarceration of people. No country on the earth can manage without a penal system, but just recently NPR aired a report that America now had more than 2,000,000 people in prisons and jails.

The rate of incarceration in the United States, 702 inmates per 100,000 residents, continues to be the highest in the world. When looking at population sub-groups two-thirds of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities, and for black males in their twenties, one in every eight is in prison or jail on any given day. Overall, 4.8 percent of black males were in prison or jail, compared to 1.7 percent of Hispanics and 0.6 percent of whites. Since 1980 the number of women in prison has increased at nearly double the rate for men. Nationally, the 93,000 women in state and federal prison represent a figure more than seven times the number in 1980. Black women in prisons and jails continue to outnumber their white (5 times as many) and Hispanic (more than twice as many) counterparts. What is also surprising is that in rough numbers, approximately 10,000 children are transferred annually to adult criminal court.

Paying your price to society is what we classically think of about people who have done wrong, but since the early 1990s, an increasing number of laws and policies have been enacted that restrict persons with a felony conviction (particularly convictions for drug offenses) from accessing many social benefits and economic opportunities. These include restrictions on employment, receipt of welfare benefits, access to public housing, and eligibility for student loans for higher education. These prohibitions severely affect offenders' life prospects through employment and other restrictions.

When you walk to the El or drive down a bad street you often think about when are the police ever going to do anything about the gang banging and drug dealing. If you get jumped or robbed you certainly want the person to pay for their crime. But are we really solving the problems and benefiting society in the long run by locking more people up without providing alternatives both on the front end of life and the back end of a prison sentence?

Much of this came from The Sentencing Project while the Salt of the Earth website from Clarion Publications also was a source.