[News] Latest prison stats at a glance!

[News at freedomarchives.org]

Greetings all:  A new website -- www.prisonsucks.com -- gives up a 
comprehensive view of the current prison system and the latest statistics 
broken down by "racial" groups.  It's an alarming sight to say the 
least.   Check it out.
Incarceration is not an equal opportunity punishment
On December 31, 2002, there were 2,033,331 people in U.S. prisons and 
jails. That's a rise of 3.7% during the 12 previous months, more than twice 
the growth rate of the previous year. The average annual increase since 
1995 has been 3.6%.

As of December 31, 2002, the U.S. incarceration rate was 701 per 100,000 
residents. But when you break down the statistics you see that 
incarceration is not an equal opportunity punishment.

U.S. incarceration rates by race, June 30, 2002:
                 Whites: 353 per 100,000
                 Latinos: 895 per 100,000
                 Blacks: 2,470 per 100,000

Gender is an important "filter" on the who goes to prison or jail, June 30, 
2002:
                 Females: 113 per 100,000
                 Males: 1,309 per 100,000

Look at just the males by race, and the incarceration rates become even 
more frightening, June 30, 2002:
                 White males: 649 per 100,000
                 Hispanic males: 1,740 per 100,000
                 Black males: 4,810 per 100,000

If you look at males aged 25-29 and by race, you can see what is going on 
even clearer, June 30, 2002:
                 For White males ages 25-29: 1,615 per 100,000.
                 For Latino males ages 25-29: 4,339 per 100,000.
                 For Black males ages 25-29: 12,877 per 100,000. (That's 
12.9% of Black men in their late 20s.)

Or you can make some international comparisons:
South Africa under Apartheid was internationally condemned as a racist 
society.
                 South Africa under apartheid (1993), Black adult men: 851 
per 100,000
                 U.S. under George Bush (2002), Black adult men: 7,150 per 
100,000

What does it mean that the leader of the "free world" locks up its Black 
men at a rate 8.4 times higher than the most openly racist country in the 
world?

Statistics as of December 31, 2002 from Prisoners in 2002, Table 1 and page 
2. Statistics as of June 30, 2002 from Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 
2002, Tables 1, 14 and 15; Calculation for rates by Race and for Black 
adult men uses data from Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2002 Tables 13 
and 14 and Census preliminary Population estimates for July 1, 2002 
provided by BJS; South Africa figures from Americans Behind Bars: The 
International Use of Incarceration. All references to Blacks and Whites are 
for what the Bureau of Justice Statistics and U.S. Census refer to as 
"non-Hispanic Blacks" and "non-Hispanic Whites".)

View the above facts with charts or download the above as a 1 page PDF file 
suitable for redistribution.



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