Last year 25,000 people joined the not-so-exclusive ranks of the federally incarcerated. A recent study, reported by the New York Times, finds that more than 1 in every 100 American adults is now in prison, the highest ratio ever reported. Meaning that those folks who couldn’t make it to your last high school reunion—chances are good a handful of them are in permanent detention (and these numbers don’t even include the 723,000 folks in local jails). Especially, no shocker, if you grew up in neighborhood with a high percentage of black and Hispanic residents. Based on Justice Department figures for 2006, one in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, one in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34. And while violent crime rates have fallen by 25 percent over the past 20 years, the growing prison population has significantly eaten away at states’ budgets, and also thrown non-violent offenders in with the hardened general prison population, inadvertently creating a very different type of educational system. There are currently 5,500 D.W.I offenders in prison, including people caught driving under the influence who had not been in an accident. Anyway, sorry for all the numbers, but I’m a little burnt out on making ill-informed judgment calls on why and how our governments are royally screwing up, so I’ll just leave it at that and let you decide.

Thursday, February 28th, 2008 \ 9:54 pm \ Uncategorized
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