MARCH FORTH
FOR FREEDOM
According to December 2009 info online
from the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics
(BJS) $68,747,203,000 was spent on corrections in
2006.
-The United States has the highest documented incarceration
rate in the world. The U.S. incarceration rate on
December 31, 2008 was 754 inmates per 100,000 U.S.
residents. The USA also has the highest total documented
prison and jail population in the world.
-The People's Republic of China ranks second with
1.5 million inmates, while having four times the population,
thus having only about 18% of the US incarceration
rate
-According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics
(BJS): "In 2008, over 7.3 million people were
on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole at yearend
- 3.2% of all U.S. adult residents or 1 in every 31
adults."
-2,304,115 were incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails
in 2008. In addition, according to a December 2009
BJS report, there were 92,854 held in juvenile facilities
as of the 2006 Census of Juveniles in Residential
Placement (CJRP), conducted by the Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
-In 2002, 93.2% of prisoners were male.
About 10.4% of all black males in the United States
between the ages of 25 and 29 were sentenced and in
prison, compared to 2.4% of Hispanic males and 1.3%
of white males.
-In 2001 a study determined the accuracy
of modern jury's and judges in the US.
Researchers found that judges were mistaken in they're
verdicts 12% of the time while juries were wrong in
17% of cases.
-In 2001 1 in 142 American citizens
were in prison.
In 2005, about 1 out of every 136 U.S. residents was
incarcerated either in prison or jail
In 2009 that figure is now 1 in 100.
-American prisons and jails held 2,304,115
inmates in 2008.[2] Approximately one in every 18
men in the United States is behind bars or being monitored
A significantly greater percentage of the American
population is in some form of correctional control
even though crime rates have declined by about 25
percent from 1988-2008.
-70% of prisoners in the United States
are non-whites.
-In recent decades the U.S. has experienced
a surge in its prison population, quadrupling since
1980, partially as a result of mandated sentences
that came about during the "war on drugs."
Violent crime and property crime have declined since
the early 1990s
-The three leading corporations in the private prison
business in the U.S. are the Corrections Corporation
of America, the GEO Group, and Cornell Companies.
-Private companies which provide services to prisons
combine in the American Correctional Association,
which advocates legislation favorable to the industry.
Such private companies comprise what has been termed
the Prison-industrial complex.
-United States prisons operate like labor camps, according
to a comprehensive University of Massachusetts study.
Operating like the labor camps of Communist China,
prisons in at least two states, California and Oregon,
are doing "exactly what the U.S. has been lambasting
China for", the report says. It discusses the
similarities in the two countries' prison labor systems.
"You might just as well call this slave labor",
the report continues, explaining that U.S. prison
work is not volunteer work since inmates get time
deducted off their sentences for working in the prison:
"If prisoners don't work, they serve longer sentences,
lose privileges, and risk solitary confinement."
The report concludes that there is no "real difference
between China's forced labor and that in the U.S.
prison system."[44]
The United States prison system is being called "a
new form of inhumane exploitation." Current
penal labor in the U.S. is said to have "its
roots in slavery.
