Land of the Free? US Has 25 Percent of the World’s Prisoners
by Joshua Holland
Credit: Shutterstock
The United States has about five percent of the world’s population and houses around 25 percent of its prisoners. In large part, that’s the result of the “war on drugs” and long mandatory minimum sentences, but it also reflects America’s tendency to criminalize acts that other countries view as civil violations.
In 2010, The Economist highlighted a case in which four Americans were arrested for importing lobster tails in plastic bags rather than in cardboard boxes. That violated a Honduran law which that country no longer enforces, but because it’s still on the books there its enforced here. “The lobstermen had no idea they were breaking the law. Yet three of them got eight years apiece.” When the article was published 10 years later, two of them were still behind bars.
A UN report noted that Alabama officials had arrested dozens of people who were too poor to repair septic systems that violated state health laws. In one case, authorities took steps to arrest a 27-year-old single mother living in a mobile home with her autistic child for the same “crime.” Replacing the system would have cost more than her $12,000 annual income, according to the report.
As The Economist put it:America imprisons people for technical violations of immigration laws, environmental standards and arcane business rules. So many federal rules carry criminal penalties that experts struggle to count them. Many are incomprehensible. Few are ever repealed, though the Supreme Court… pared back a law against depriving the public of “the intangible right of honest services”, which prosecutors loved because they could use it against almost anyone. Still, they have plenty of other weapons. By counting each e-mail sent by a white-collar wrongdoer as a separate case of wire fraud, prosecutors can threaten him with a gargantuan sentence unless he confesses, or informs on his boss. The potential for injustice is obvious.About 10 percent of America’s prisoners are housed in the federal corrections system. Last week, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General released its annual review of DOJ operations. And couched in typically cautious bureaucratic language, the report details a growing crisis within the federal prison system that threatens to undermine the DOJ’s other vital functions, including the enforcement of civil rights legislation, counter-terrorism and crime-fighting.
According to the report:The Department of Justice (Department) is facing two interrelated crises in the federal prison system. The first is the continually increasing cost of incarceration, which, due to the current budget environment, is already having an impact on the Department’s other law enforcement priorities. The second is the safety and security of the federal prison system, which has been overcrowded for years and, absent significant action, will face even greater overcrowding in the years ahead.The report notes that Washington’s push for austerity is aggravating the problem. The federal prison population has grown by almost 40 percent since 2001, but the budget for the Bureau of Prisons — after rising by about a third between 2001 and 2011 — has fallen by nearly 12 percent since then. And costs for services like pre-trial detentions have more than doubled over the past 12 years. According to the White House budget, the cost of incarcerating federal prisoners is expected to continue to grow, and the Inspector General notes that there’s “no evidence that the cost curve will be broken anytime soon.”
Some of that cost growth is the result of an aging prison population. According to the report, in just the past three years, the number of inmates over the age of 65 has grown by almost a third, while the population under 30 fell by 12 percent. “Elderly inmates are roughly two to three times more expensive to incarcerate than their younger counterparts,” according to the review.
Several factors have contributed to the growing numbers held in federal facilities. Primary among them is a longstanding trend of prosecuting more cases that had previously been handled by state and local courts in the federal system.By one estimate, the number of federal criminal offenses grew by 30 percent between 1980 and 2004; indeed, there are now well over 4,000 offenses carrying criminal penalties in the United States Code. In addition, an estimated 10,000 to 100,000 federal regulations can be enforced criminally.Previous Inspector General reviews had found that programs which might have eased the overcrowded system – like a compassionate release program for sick and infirm inmates, and another that allows foreign nationals to serve out their sentences in their home countries – have been underutilized and/or badly mismanaged.
A growing prison population and a shrinking budget for housing it is also creating serious security problems. The report notes that while the ratio of inmates to correctional officers in the five largest state correctional systems was 6-to-1 in 2005, the federal system has 10 inmates for every officer.
Earlier this year, Attorney General Eric Holder released the DOJ’s “Smart on Crime” initiative, which, among other reforms, directs prosecutors to avoid filing charges carrying long mandatory sentences against drug offenders unless they are violent, connected to cartels or gangs, or have significant criminal histories. But the IG’s report suggests that the impact of these changes may be limited because many of these offenders would have already qualified for a “safety valve” that Congress created in the 1990s which allows for their early release.
The problems detailed in the Inspector General’s report merely scratch the surface, as around nine out of 10 prisoners are held in state and local facilities. According to a 2012 report in The New York Times, state spending on prisons is now growing faster than any other budget item other than Medicaid. California now spends more on its prisons than its higher education system – a stark reversal from thirty years ago, when it spent three times as much educating its citizens than locking them up.
- A black male born in 1991 has a 29% chance of spending time in prison at some point in his life.2
- Nearly one in three African American males aged 20–29 are under some form of criminal justice supervision whether imprisoned, jailed, on parole or probation.
- One out of nine African American men will be incarcerated between the ages of 20 and 34.
- Black males ages 30 to 34 have the highest incarceration rate of any race/ethnicity.
- African Americans now cons ute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population
- African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites
- Together, African American and Hispanics comprised 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population
- According to Unlocking America, if African American and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rates of whites, today's prison and jail populations would decline by approximately 50%
- One in six black men had been incarcerated as of 2001. If current trends continue, one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime
- 1 in 100 African American women are in prison
- Nationwide, African-Americans represent 26% of juvenile arrests, 44% of youth who are detained, 46% of the youth who are judicially waived to criminal court, and 58% of the youth admitted to state prisons (Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice).
Drug Sentencing Disparities
- About 14 million Whites and 2.6 million African Americans report using an illicit drug
- 5 times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites
- African Americans represent 12% of the total population of drug users, but 38% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 59% of those in state prison for a drug offense.
- African Americans serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months). (Sentencing Project)
Contributing Factors
- Inner city crime prompted by social and economic isolation
- Crime/drug arrest rates: African Americans represent 12% of monthly drug users, but comprise 32% of persons arrested for drug possession
- "Get tough on crime" and "war on drugs" policies
- Mandatory minimum sentencing, especially disparities in sentencing for crack and powder cocaine possession
- In 2002, blacks cons uted more than 80% of the people sentenced under the federal crack cocaine laws and served substantially more time in prison for drug offenses than did whites, despite that fact that more than 2/3 of crack cocaine users in the U.S. are white or Hispanic
- "Three Strikes"/habitual offender policies
- Zero Tolerance policies as a result of perceived problems of school violence; adverse affect on black children.
- 35% of black children grades 7-12 have been suspended or expelled at some point in their school careers compared to 20% of Hispanics and 15% of whites
Effects of Incarceration
- Jail reduces work time of young people over the next decade by 25-30 percent when compared with arrested youths who were not incarcerated
- Jails and prisons are recognized as settings where society's infectious diseases are highly concentrated
- Prison has not been proven as a rehabilitation for behavior, as two-thirds of prisoners will reoffend
Exorbitant Cost of Incarceration: Is it Worth It?
- About $70 billion dollars are spent on corrections yearly
- Prisons and jails consume a growing portion of the nearly $200 billion we spend annually on public safety
- Blacks are easier to target because they by and large portray drug dealing as desirable lifestyle, so young blacks like hanging on street corners pushing small amounts of drugs.
- Blacks in inner cities come from mostly single parent households because the black male portrays family life as "vanilla". No self respecting player would have a family, but they can still make babies.
- Not having a father figure who gives a means black kids are raised by other black kids. They view drug dealers as father figures.
- The wealthiest of blacks, the role models, portray themselves as thugs with business a en. You can bet Snoop Dog and Jay Z don't push small bags of crack on the corner. They just like to pretend they do so they can bilk ignorant ass black kids of any money they've made dealin', stealin' or killin'.
- Education is highly frowned up in the black community. Respect comes from street cred and prison time served, what ride you have, how much money you have.
- The residuals of such can be seen along the fringes of other races who also want the cred without sacrificing the education, family or becoming a real criminal. They just want to act like one, talk like one... where their language is devoid of any semblance of proper teachings.
- It won't get better any time soon. Blacks are cannibalistic by nature, so if they can take advantage of their own race for personal gain, they will. The talk about raising the race is just smoke and mirrors. Black community leaders are criminals themselves, snake oil salesmen who are just fancier pimps.
Statistics can't be racist
I pulled mine from NAACP website.
that ain't and it ain't gonna be as long as Brazil has something to say about it
Brazil opens prison doors to investors
Brazil’s economy might not be growing as fast as it used to, but investors will be given the chance to buy into what remains a true growth industry in Latin America’s largest country – prisons.
The government of Brazil’s richest state, São Paulo, will on Tuesday kick off a roadshow in London in which it will be seeking private investors for three prison contracts worth a total of R$750m ($375m) as part of an overall infrastructure package worth R$40bn.
Of these, prisons are among the biggest potential growth industries. The number of people incarcerated in Brazil, which has the world’s fourth-largest prison population behind the US, China and Russia, was nearly 550,000 as of June last year, up more than 50 per cent in five years, according to Ministry of Justice figures.
in a few years Brazil's prison population will reach levels that will make China, Russia and USA look like piece of cake
I was being serious. That's only more damning.
Land of the free is bull .
How many countries simply execute their guilty, or have such harsh punishments that people are afraid to commit crimes?
Kim Jong is that you?
No it's not. Convicts cannot vote, ergo it's not their land.
could actually solve this problem by grouping them into one area and just drop a nuke or take them all out to infested shark waters and see them swim
Sharks don't eat blacks, they think it's whale
ma s
true democracies in general hold more prisoners than autocracies/monarchies because they'd rather kill those criminals rather than send them behind bars & feeding them with taxpayer money, imho. And the US is the biggest, truest and purest democracy in the world.
Brazilian prisons are among the worst in the world.
if there is one place you don't to end up is a Brazilian prison...absolutely disgusting conditions....a shame really
How else is Forever 21 supposed to get its high quality merchandise?
Cons utional Republic
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