Extractions: Skip Site Map Search Prisonsucks.com is a clearinghouse for useful, verifiable statistics about the crime control industry. Too often prison activists use statistics that are out of date, provided without citation or simply wrong. One of these days the public will start listening to prison activists, so let's be prepared to win without being sidetracked by arguments over defective statistics. In some cases, the numbers we need don't exist. In others, the facts exist but activists don't know where to find them. Now you do. Start at prisonsucks.com. Explore the links above (especially research ) and take action today! Written by the editor of this site and co-published with the Western Prison Project, The Prison Index: Taking the Pulse of the Crime Control Industry is the first index of statistics about our nation's criminal justice system ever published. Containing 611 facts and 17 graphs and charts, this 48-page volume presents, in black-and-white, the state of crime control in America. Read more and order online On June 30, 2004, there were 2,131,180 people in U.S. prisons and jails. That's a rise of 2.3% during the 12 previous months. Federal prisons are growing almost 5 times faster than state prison populations.
US Notches World's Highest Incarceration Rate | Csmonitor.com in the United States, the highest incarceration level in the world. A lot of people think that the reason crime rates have been dropping over the http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0818/p02s01-usju.html
Extractions: WASHINGTON More than 5.6 million Americans are in prison or have served time there, according to a new report by the Justice Department released Sunday. That's 1 in 37 adults living in the United States, the highest incarceration level in the world. It's the first time the US government has released estimates of the extent of imprisonment, and the report's statistics have broad implications for everything from state fiscal crises to how other nations view the American experience.
NRA-ILA :: Fact Sheets crime Statistics. The files below for the US, the 50 states, and the District of and a chart comparing trends in violent crime and incarceration. http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?ID=128
Extractions: Society and Culture Crime Data Law Enforcement ... Society and Culture Career or Industry: All Industries Clerical / Administrative Healthcare / Medical Human Resources Information Technology Legal Services Management Other Transportation/Logistics Travel / Hospitality / Restaurant Location: All States AK AL AR AZ CA CO CT DC DE FL GA HI IA ID IL IN KS KY LA MA MD ME MI MN MO MS MT NC ND NE NH NJ NM NV NY OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VA VT WA WI WV WY Continuing Education School Matcher Job Index var zflag_nid="305"; var zflag_cid="181/1"; var zflag_sid="114"; var zflag_width="1"; var zflag_height="1"; var zflag_sz="15";
Crime: Is Today's Incarceration An Effective Crime Deterrent? Lets bring back some of the crime deterring qualities of the prisons of 30 yearsago. Let s make incarceration an effective crime deterrent as it once was. http://www.hardcoretruth.com/US_Prisons/
Extractions: The major question that comes to my mind regarding crime statistics is "Why is it that the number of people that are incarcerated in the U.S. is rising at an unprecedented rate?" Analyst say that the crime rate has remained relatively flat over the last 15 years, but today we are seeing the most rapid growth in our nation's prison population since the first prisons were established in the 19th century. Some say that this incarceration increase is due to the crack down on drug users. Other say that it is due to the fact that sentenced offenders are more likely to be sent to prison for there crimes than ever before. But I can tell you first hand why our prisons are over populating. I use to be a correctional officer at a maximum security prison in Riverside, Texas. The reason our prisons are over populating is because incarceration is no longer an effective crime deterrent.
Washingtonpost.com: High Incarceration Rate May Fuel Community Crime Many people assume that incarceration reduces crime. But when incarceration getsto a certain density, that is when you see the effects change. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/july99/prisons12.htm
Extractions: Monday, July 12, 1999; Page A1 But in 1997, the declining crime rate in Frenchtown began to level off, failing to keep pace with drops in similar Tallahassee neighborhoods. And researchers analyzing crime trends here have fingered an unlikely culprit: the high number of Frenchtown residents sitting in prison cells. Research here supports a controversial theory being advanced by an increasing number of criminologists, who have concluded that although high incarceration rates generally have helped reduce crime, they eventually may reach a "tipping point," where so many people in a given neighborhood are going to prison that it begins to destabilize the community and becomes a factor that increases crime. "Until recently, nobody has really thought about incarceration in the aggregate," said Dina R. Rose, one of the researchers studying the relationship between incarceration and crime in the Frenchtown area. "Many people assume that incarceration reduces crime. But when incarceration gets to a certain density, that is when you see the effects change."
Prevention Dividend Project: Data Sources Canada crime and Criminal Justice Canadian Police College Access to JusticeNetwork crime and Discusses the rate and costs of incarceration in Canada, http://prevention-dividend.com/en/research/justice_sources.htm
The Sentencing Project 27 Between 1972 to 1996, crime rates fluctuated but the incarceration rate The prison incarceration rates of some states were considerably higher than http://www.sentencingproject.org/losing_05.cfm
Extractions: Advocates IV. CRIME, CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICIES AND INCARCERATION As one might expect, the number of people disenfranchised reflects to some extent the number of people involved in criminal activity. But the proportion of the population that is disenfranchised has been exacerbated in recent years by the advent of harsh sentencing policies such as mandatory minimum The impact of changed sentencing policies is readily apparent from Department of Justice data. For example, persons arrested for burglary had a 53 percent greater likelihood of being sentenced to prison in 1992 than in 1980, while those arrested for larceny experienced a 100 percent increase. The most dramatic change can be seen for drug offenses, where arrestees were almost five times as likely to be sent to prison in 1992 as in 1980.28 In addition, since the number of drug arrests nearly doubled during this period, the impact was magnified further.29 Over this same twelve-year period, the rate of incarceration in prisons rosefrom 139 to 332 per 100,000 U.S. residents.30 Eighty-four percent of the increase in state prison admissions during this period was due to incarceration of nonviolent offenders.31 Racially Disproportionate Incarceration Rates If current rates of incarceration remain unchanged, 28.5 percent of black men will be confined in prison at least once during their lifetime, a figure six times greater than that for white men.36 As a result, nearly three in ten adult African American men will be temporarily or permanently deprived of the right to vote. But the total numbers of disenfranchised will be greater because, as noted above, it will include a substantial percentage of those convicted of a felony but not receiving a prison sentence (e.g., sentenced to probation). In states that disenfranchise ex-felons, we estimate that 40 percent of the next generation of black men is likely to lose permanently the right to vote.37
Extractions: In this briefing, we present new figures documenting racial disparities state-by-state in the incarceration of African Americans and Latinos. We hope they will help state residents and public officials to understand their state-specific incarceration patterns and practices. Two years ago, drawing on data from thirty-seven states, Human Rights Watch documented racial disparities in the incarceration of state drug offenders. Since most drug offenders are convicted of state law violations, our state-by-state analysis provided an important insight into the consequences of state policies that were masked by the more commonly available aggregate national data.
Extractions: Recent Reports Support HRW About HRW Site Map IV. THE ROLE OF VIOLENT CRIME IN U.S. INCARCERATION RATES Contrary to popular assumption, the remarkably high and increasing rates of incarceration in the U.S. since the 1980s have not been driven by increases in the rate of violent crime. Rather, the burgeoning prison population is the result of changes in penal policies and practices and of the soaring number of drug offenders given prison sentences. Despite the prominent role violent crime has played in the concerns of politicians, the media, and the public, the trends in offense rates for murder, robbery, burglary, and forcible rape were relatively flat or declining between 1980 and 1996 even before the past couple of years in which declining crime rates have been widely noted. The only violent crime that showed clear growth was aggravated assault, which may partly reflect increased official recording of domestic assaults and the increased tendency of police to record simple assaults as aggravated. Overall, "crime rates for most crimes peaked around 1980, fell through the mid-80s, rose for a while for reasons largely associated with the crack cocaine epidemic, and have since fallen sharply."
Crime Statistics crime Statistics. Because there are vast amounts of statistical information If recent incarceration rates remain unchanged, an estimated 1 of every 20 http://www.aphf.org/crimestats.html
Extractions: In 1999, U.S. residents age 12 or older experienced approximately 28.8 million crimes, according to 1999 findings from the National Crime Victimization Survey. Almost two-thirds of defendants charged with a felony in the 75 most populated counties in May 1996 were released from jail pending disposition of their case Most victims and perpetrators in homicides are male. Women were 5% of the State prison inmates in 1991, up from 4% in 1986. Most law enforcement officers are killed with firearms, particularly handguns More than 7 of every 10 jail inmates had prior sentences to probation or incarceration.
Extractions: Many criminologists think we are sending too many people to prison. They argue that incarceration is inappropriate for a substantial minority of prisoners and much too expensive. It could be argued that incarceration rates escalated here sharply in the 1990s because we had some catching up to do witness the fact that from the early 1960s to the early 1970s, the violent crime rate was rising sharply but the incarceration rate was actually falling. According to Bureau of Justice Statistics, the proportion of state prisoners who are violent offenders has fallen from almost 60 percent in 1980 to 48 percent in 1999. In federal prisons, only 12 percent are doing time for violent crimes compared to 17 percent in 1990. On the other hand, more inmates are behind bars for drug-related crimes. In state prisons, it is now 21 percent. In the federal system it is 58 percent compared with 25 percent in 1980.
Extractions: The Texas crime statistics tell an amazing story about the ability of punishment, even of the mildest variety, to reduce crime. Its almost a controlled experiment in the efficacy of incarceration and punishment. "The most dramatic change has occured in the ability of government to imprison criminals." The Texas Prison Boom. Why the big declines? Punishment works. Incarceration works. Its that simple. Elected on a more cops on the street pledge, Houston Mayor Bob Lanier attributes the continuing decline to increased law enforcement and an increase in state action on prisons and paroles.10 The mayor cautions, however, We are down to a rate where progress will come slower. Among all the tools available to combat crime, the most dramatic change has occurred in the ability of government to imprison criminals. Texas prison capacity has tripled in the last five years: In September 1990, Texas prisons had a design capacity of 49,000.
Crime In America Documents the rise of crime in America. Discusses how to fight crime in While the idea of incarceration is not new, some of the recent findings are. http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/crime.html
Extractions: LU-Announce Case #1: Polly Klaas of Petaluma, California, was abducted from her suburban home during a sleepover with two friends on October 1, 1993, and subsequently murdered. Her alleged assailant, Richard Allen Davis, had been sentenced to sixteen years in prison for kidnapping, but was released in June after serving only eight years of that sentence. Case #2: Michael Jordan's father, James Jordan, was fatally shot in the chest on Interstate 95 in North Carolina on July 23, 1993. Charged with the murder were Larry Martin Demery and Daniel Andre Green. Demery had been charged in three previous cases involving theft, robbery, and forgery. He was awaiting trial for bashing a convenience-store clerk in the head with a cinder block during a robbery. Green had been paroled after serving two years of a six- year sentence for attempting to kill a man by smashing him in the head with an axe, leaving his victim in a coma for three months. Americans are scared, and they are angry. The scary orgy of violent crime has made average citizens afraid to walk the streets in front of their homes. And this fear has fueled a public cry to end the killing fields in America. Americans have had enough, and they want to know why known criminals were let back out on the streets so they could kill Polly Klaas and James Jordan.
American Prison Population Surpasses 2 Million The rate of incarceration in the United States, 702 inmates per 100000 residents, Violent crime, which is of most concern to people on the street, http://salt.claretianpubs.org/sjnews/2003/04/sjn0304f.html
Extractions: For the first time in history, the number of inmates in American prisons and jails has exceeded 2 million. As of June 30, 2002, there were 1.35 million prisoners in State and Federal prisons and an additional 665, 475 in local jails, according to a new report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. This represents an increase of nearly 2 percent over the first six months of 2002. The rate of incarceration in the United States, 702 inmates per 100,000 residents, continues to be the highest in the world. Among black males 25 to 29, 12.9 percent were in prison or jail. Overall, 4.8 percent of black males were in prison or jails, compared to 1.7 percent of Hispanics and 0.6 percent of whites. Black women in prisons and jails continue to outnumber their white (5 times as many) and Hispanic (more than twice as many) counterparts. According to criminal justice analysts, the Bureau's report demonstrates state and federal policies continue to drive up incarceration rates despite sharp drops in violent crime rates since 1994 and efforts by many state governors and legislators from both political parties to reduce swollen prison populations and corrections budgets during an economic downturn. "The relentless increases in prison and jail populations can best be explained as the legacy of an entrenched infrastructure of punishment that has been embedded in the criminal justice system over the last 30 years," says Malcolm C. Young, Executive Director of
ORS COLORADO VIOLENT crime OFFENSE RATE vs. incarceration RATE, 19802003, Rate per100000 Violent crime vs. incarceration Rate Data Table 31.4KB PDF File http://dcj.state.co.us/ors/stats1.htm
Extractions: Please note: The following information is available in Adobe Acrobat (version 6.0) file format. This file format is read-only and print-only (not editable). You will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to download these files. The Acrobat Reader is available FREE OF CHARGE at Adobe's web site . Follow the instructions there for downloading the Acrobat Reader. COLORADO VIOLENT CRIME OFFENSE RATE vs. INCARCERATION RATE, 1980-2003, Rate per 100,000 Violent Crime vs. Incarceration Rate Data Table Violent Crime Includes: Murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Sources: Offense Data Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime and Justice Data Online and Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Report 2003
[PRISONACT] Fwd: Full Jails Not Lowering Crime PRISONACT Fwd Full Jails Not Lowering crime. radman resist@best.com Rising incarceration rates in some states didn t bring about a commensurate http://www.prisonactivist.org/pipermail/prisonact-list/2000-October/003161.html
Extractions: Mon, 02 Oct 2000 18:11:02 -0700 September 28, 2000 Study: Full Jails Not Lowering Crime By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 4:13 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) Putting more people in prison doesn't automatically result in less crime, says an organization that advocates alternatives to incarceration. Although the study by The Sentencing Project acknowledged that the connection comes into play quite often, it says that's not automatically the case. The private group based its findings, released Thursday, on an analysis of crime statistics from 1991 to 1998 from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. During that period, overall U.S. crime decreased by 22 percent, the study said. During the same time frame, the number of state and federal prisoners across the country rose by a half, to more than 1.2 million. However, the Sentencing Project said, much of the reduction in crime rates is
Extractions: CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRESS RELEASE www.cjcj.org Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 1622 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 The principal authors of this report were Dana Kaplan, Vincent Schiraldi and Jason Ziedenberg. Beck, Allen J. Prisoners in 1999 (August 2000). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Schiraldi, Vincent and Ziedenberg, Jason. (April 1999) The Punishing Decade: Prison and Jail Estimates at the Millenium. Washington, DC: The Justice Policy Institute. Ibid. Davis, Christopher, Estes, Richard and Schiraldi, Vincent. (1996) ³Three Strikes²: The New Apartheid. San Francisco, CA: Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. Ambrosio, Tara Jen and Schiraldi, Vincent. (February 1997) Trading Classrooms for Cellblocks: A National Perspective. Washington, D.C.: The Justice Policy Institute. Schiraldi, Vincent, and Ziedenberg, Jason. The Florida Experiment: An Analysis of the Impact of Granting Prosecutors the Discretion to try juveniles as adults. (July 1999) Washington, DC: The Justice Policy Institute. Gangi, Robert, Schiraldi, Vincent and Ziedenberg, Jason. (December, 1998) New York State of Mind: Higher Education vs. Prison Funding in the Empire State, 1988-1998. Washington, D.C.: The Justice Policy Institute.
Extractions: Tel: (415) 621-5661 x310 The United States holds the dubious distinction of having the largest incarcerated population in the world, with 2 million people behind bars as of year-end 1999. With only 5% of the world's population, the U.S. holds a quarter of the world's prisoners. In the 1990s alone, more persons were added to prisons and jails than in any other decade on record. While all states have increased their prison populations over the last two decades, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) has conducted a series of studies analyzing the incarceration records of individual states to put the national numbers into context. Our reports have highlighted state-specific prison growth, the disproportionate impact incarceration policies have had on African American and Latino communities and youth, and have analyzed the role prison growth may have played on the changing crime rate. Some of JPI's recent findings include: In the state of California, nearly four in ten African American men in their twenties are under some form of criminal justice control. While African Americans make up 7% of California's population, and constitute 20% of felony arrests, 31% of the prison population and 43% of third "strike" defendants sent to state prison.
