Incarceration in the United States
![]() | It has been suggested that United States incarceration rate be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since July 2015. |
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/US_incarceration_timeline-clean.svg/350px-US_incarceration_timeline-clean.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/U.S._incarceration_rates_1925_onwards.png/350px-U.S._incarceration_rates_1925_onwards.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b6/Adult_incarceration_statistics_for_the_USA._Timeline.gif/350px-Adult_incarceration_statistics_for_the_USA._Timeline.gif)
Incarceration in the United States is one of the main forms of punishment, rehabilitation, or both for the commission of felony and other offenses. The United States has the largest prison population in the world,[3][4][5] and the second-highest per-capita incarceration rate, behind Seychelles (which in 2014 had a total prison population of 735 out of a population of around 92,000).[3][6] In 2013 in the US, there were 698 people incarcerated per 100,000 population. This is the U.S. incarceration rate for adults or people tried as adults.[7][3]
According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 2,220,300 adults were incarcerated in US federal and state prisons, and county jails in 2013 – about 0.91% of adults (1 in 110) in the U.S. resident population.[2] Additionally, 4,751,400 adults in 2013 (1 in 51) were on probation or on parole.[2] In total, 6,899,000 adults were under correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail, or prison) in 2013 – about 2.8% of adults (1 in 35) in the U.S. resident population.[2] In 2014, the total number of persons in the adult correctional systems had fallen to 6,851,000 persons, approximately 52,200 fewer offenders than at the year end of 2013 as reported by the BJS. About 1 in 36 adults (or 2.8% of adults in the US) was under some form of correctional supervision – the lowest rate since 1996. On average the correctional population has declined by 1.0% since 2007; while this continued to stay true in 2014 the number of incarcerated adults slightly increased in 2014.[8]
In addition, there were 54,148 juveniles in juvenile detention in 2013.[9]
Although debtor's prisons no longer exist in the United States, residents of some U.S. states can still be incarcerated for debt as of 2016[update].[10][11][12][13] The Vera Institute of Justice reported in 2015 that jails throughout the United States have become warehouses for the poor, the mentally ill and those suffering from addiction as such individuals lack the financial means or mental capacity to post bail.[14]
According to a 2014 Human Rights Watch report, "tough-on-crime" laws adopted since the 1980s, have filled U.S. prisons with mostly nonviolent offenders.[15] This policy failed to rehabilitate prisoners and many were worse on release than before incarceration. Rehabilitation programs for offenders can be more cost effective than prison.[16] According to the Brennan Center for Justice, falling crime rates cannot be ascribed to mass incarceration.[17]
According to a 2016 analysis of federal data by the U.S. Education Department, state and local spending on incarceration has grown three times as much as spending on public education since 1980.[18]
History
![]() | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (July 2014) |
In 1841, Dorothea Dix discovered that prison conditions were, in her opinion, inhumane. Prisoners were chained naked, whipped with rods. Others, criminally insane, were caged, or placed in cellars, or closets. She insisted on changes throughout the rest of her life. While focusing on the insane, her comments also resulted in changes for other inmates.[19]
Prison systems
Persons who violate state laws and/or territorial laws generally are placed in state or territorial prisons, while those who violate United States federal law are generally placed in federal prisons operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), an agency of the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ). The BOP also houses adult felons convicted of violating District of Columbia laws due to the National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement Act of 1997.
As of 2004, state prisons proportionately house more violent felons, so state prisons in general gained a more negative reputation compared to federal prisons.[20]
Prison populations
US and territories.[21] Incarcerated population. Adult and juvenile inmates. |
Number of inmates in 2008 |
---|---|
Total | 2,418,352 |
Federal and state prisons | 1,518,559 |
Local jails | 785,556 |
Juvenile facilities (2007)[9] | 86,927 |
Territorial prisons | 13,576 |
ICE facilities | 9,957 |
Jails in tribal territories | 2,135 |
Military facilities | 1,651 |
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/United_States_correctional_population.svg/350px-United_States_correctional_population.svg.png)
At the beginning of 2008, more than 1 in 100 adults in the United States were in prison or jail.[22][23] Total US incarceration peaked in 2008. Total correctional population (prison, jail, probation, parole) peaked in 2007.[2] If all prisoners are counted (including juvenile, territorial, ICE, Indian country, and military), then in 2008 the US had around 24.7% of the world's 9.8 million prisoners.[9][21][24]
In 2008, approximately one in every 31 adults (7.3 million) in the United States was either behind bars or being monitored (probation and parole). In recent decades the U.S. has experienced a surge in its prison population, quadrupling since 1980, partially as a result of mandatory sentencing that came about during the "War on Drugs."
As of the 2007. Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (CJRP), conducted by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 86,927 youths were held in juvenile facilities.[9][21]
As of 2009, the three states with the lowest ratios of imprisoned people per 100,000 population are Maine (150 per 100,000), Minnesota (189 per 100,000), and New Hampshire (206 per 100,000). The three states with the highest ratio are Louisiana (881 per 100,000), Mississippi (702 per 100,000) and Oklahoma (657 per 100,000).[25]
A 2005 report estimated that 27% of federal prison inmates are noncitizens, convicted of crimes while in the country legally or illegally.[26] However, federal prison inmates account for six percent of the total incarcerated population; noncitizen populations in state and local prisons are more difficult to establish.
Duration
Many legislatures continually have reduced discretion of judges in both the sentencing process and the determination of when the conditions of a sentence have been satisfied. Determinate sentencing, use of mandatory minimums, and guidelines-based sentencing continue to remove the human element from sentencing, such as the prerogative of the judge to consider the mitigating or extenuating circumstances of a crime to determine the appropriate length of the incarceration. As the consequence of "three strikes laws," the increase in the duration of incarceration in the last decade was most pronounced in the case of life prison sentences, which increased by 83% between 1992 and 2003 while violent crimes fell in the same period.[27]
Violent and nonviolent crime
In 2008, there were 198.2 violent crimes reported per 100,000 persons.[28]
In 2008, there were over 14 million people arrested for violent and non-violent crime.[28]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Felony_Sentences_in_State_Courts.pdf/page1-220px-Felony_Sentences_in_State_Courts.pdf.jpg)
7.9% of sentenced prisoners in federal prisons on September 30, 2009 were in for violent crimes.[25] 52.4% of sentenced prisoners in state prisons at year end 2008 were in for violent crimes.[25] 21.6% of convicted inmates in jails in 2002 (latest available data by type of offense) were in for violent crimes. Among unconvicted inmates in jails in 2002, 34% had a violent offense as the most serious charge. 41% percent of convicted and unconvicted jail inmates in 2002 had a current or prior violent offense; 46% were nonviolent recidivists. [29]
From 2000 to 2008, the state prison population increased by 159,200 prisoners, and violent offenders accounted for 60% of this increase. The number of drug offenders in state prisons declined by 12,400 over this period. Furthermore, while the number of sentenced violent offenders in state prison increased from 2000 through 2008, the expected length of stays for these offenders declined slightly during this period.[25]
Violent crime was not responsible for the quadrupling of the incarcerated population in the United States from 1980 to 2003. Violent crime rates had been relatively constant or declining over those decades. The prison population was increased primarily by public policy changes causing more prison sentences and lengthening time served, e.g. through mandatory minimum sentencing, "three strikes" laws, and reductions in the availability of parole or early release. 49 percent of sentenced state inmates were held for violent offenses. Perhaps the single greatest force behind the growth of the prison population has been the national "War on Drugs." The number of incarcerated drug offenders has increased twelvefold since 1980. In 2000, 22 percent of those in federal and state prisons were convicted on drug charges. [30][31] In 2011, 55.6% of the 1,131,210 sentenced prisoners in state prisons were being held for violent crimes (this number excludes the 200,966 prisoners being held due parole violations, of which 39.6% were re-incarcerated for a subsequent violent crime).[32] Also in 2011, 3.7% of the state prison population consisted of prisoners whose highest conviction was for drug possession (again excluding those incarcerated for parole violations of which 6.0% were re-incarcerated for a subsequent act of drug possession).[32]
Recidivism
A 2002 study survey, showed that among nearly 275,000 prisoners released in 1994, 67.5% were rearrested within 3 years, and 51.8% were back in prison.[33] However, the study found no evidence that spending more time in prison raises the recidivism rate, and found that those serving the longest time, 61 months or more, had a slightly lower re-arrest rate (54.2%) than every other category of prisoners. This is most likely explained by the older average age of those released with the longest sentences, and the study shows a strong negative correlation between recidivism and age upon release.
Comparison with other countries
![]() | It has been suggested that United States incarceration rate#Comparison with other countries be merged into this section. (Discuss) Proposed since November 2014. |
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/Prisoner_population_rate_world_map.svg/375px-Prisoner_population_rate_world_map.svg.png)
The United States has the highest prison population (2,220,300 in 2013).[2] It has the second highest documented incarceration rate in the world (698 per 100,000 population in 2013),[3] behind the tiny country, Seychelles, which has the highest rate (899 per 100,000 in 2014).[3] While the United States represents about 4.4 percent of the world's population,[34] it houses around 22 percent of the world's prisoners.[35]
Comparing other English-speaking developed countries,[3] the incarceration rate of Canada is 106 per 100,000 (as of 2014),[36] England and Wales is 148 per 100,000 (as of 2015),[37] and Australia is 151 per 100,000 (as of 2015).[38] Comparing other developed countries, the rate of Spain is 141 per 100,000 (as of 2015),[39] Greece is 120 per 100,000 (as of 2013),[40] Norway is 71 per 100,000 (as of 2015),[41] Netherlands is 75 per 100,000 (as of 2013),[42] and Japan is 49 per 100,000 (as of 2014).[43]
A 2008 New York Times article,[44] said that "it is the length of sentences that truly distinguishes American prison policy. Indeed, the mere number of sentences imposed here would not place the United States at the top of the incarceration lists. If lists were compiled based on annual admissions to prison per capita, several European countries would outpace the United States. But American prison stays are much longer, so the total incarceration rate is higher."
The U.S. incarceration rate peaked in 2008 when about 1 in 100 US adults was behind bars.[23] This incarceration rate exceeded the average incarceration levels in the Soviet Union during the existence of the Gulag system, when the Soviet Union's population reached 168 million, and 1.2 to 1.5 million people were in the Gulag prison camps and colonies (i.e. about 0.8 imprisoned per 100 USSR residents, according to numbers from Anne Applebaum and Steven Rosefielde).[45][46] The Soviet Union's incarceration rates from 1934 to 1953 were historically the world's highest for a modern age country, according to The Gulag Archipelago book (1973) by Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.[47] In The New Yorker article The Caging of America (2012), Adam Gopnik writes: "Over all, there are now more people under 'correctional supervision' in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height."[48]
Ethnicity
2010. Inmates in adult facilities, by race and ethnicity. Jails, and state and federal prisons.[49] | |||
Race, ethnicity | % of US population | % of U.S. incarcerated population |
National incarceration rate (per 100,000 of all ages) |
White (non-Hispanic) | 64 | 39 | 450 per 100,000 |
Hispanic | 16 | 19 | 831 per 100,000 |
Black | 13 | 40 | 2,306 per 100,000 |
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/USA_2009._Percent_of_adult_males_incarcerated_by_race_and_ethnicity.png)
According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) in 2013 non-Hispanic black males accounted for 37% of the total male prison population, non-Hispanic whites 32%, and Hispanic males 22%. White females compromised 49% of the prison population in comparison to black females who accounted for 22% of the female population. However the imprisonment rate for black females (113 per 100,000) was 2x the rate for white females (51 per 100,000.[52] Out of all ethnic groups, native Black Americans, Puerto Rican Americans, and American Indians have some of the highest rates of incarceration.[53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61] Though, of these groups, the black population is the largest, and therefore make up a large portion of those incarcerated in US prisons and jails.[clarification needed][62]
Hispanics (of all races) were 20.6% of the total jail and prison population in 2009.[50] Hispanics comprised 16.3% of the US population according to the 2010 US census.[63][64] The Northeast has the highest incarceration rates of Hispanics in the nation.[65] Connecticut has the highest Hispanic-to-White incarceration ratio with 6.6 Hispanic males for every white male. The National Average Hispanic-to-White incarceration ratio is 1.8. Other states with high Hispanic-to-White incarcerations include Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York.[66][67]
As the Hispanic community is not monolithic, variations are seen in incarceration rates. Among the Hispanic community, Puerto Ricans have the highest incarceration rate. Located primarily in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states, they are up to six times more likely to be incarcerated than whites, which may explain the higher incarceration rates for Hispanics overall in the Northeast region.[68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76] Illegal immigrants, usually Mexican nationals, also make up a substantial number of Hispanics incarcerated.[77][78][79]
In 2010, adult black non-Hispanic males were incarcerated at the rate of 4,347 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents. Adult white males were incarcerated at the rate of 678 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents. Adult Hispanic males were incarcerated at the rate of 1,755 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents.[1] (For female rates see the table below.) Asian Americans have lower incarceration rates than any other racial group, including whites.[80]
Black majority cities have similar crime statistics for blacks as do cities where majority of population is white. For example, white-plurality San Diego has a slightly lower crime rate for blacks than does Atlanta, a city which has black majority in population and city government.[81]
In 2013, by age 18, 30% of black males, 26% of Hispanic males, and 22% of white males have been arrested. By age 23, 49% of black males, 44% of Hispanic males, and 38% of white males have been arrested.[82] According to Antonio Moore in his Huffington Post article, "there are more African American men incarcerated in the U.S. than the total prison populations in India, Argentina, Canada, Lebanon, Japan, Germany, Finland, Israel and England combined." There are only 19 million African American males in the United States, collectively these countries represent over 1.6 billion people.[83]
Sex
2010 adult incarceration rates by race, ethnicity, and sex per 100,000 adult U.S. residents[1] | |||
---|---|---|---|
Race or ethnicity |
Male | Female | |
White | 678 | 91 | |
Black | 4,347 | 260 | |
Hispanic | 1,775 | 133 |
In 2013, there were 102,400 adult females in local jails in the United States, and 111,300 adult females in state and federal prisons.[2] Within the US, the rate of female incarceration increased fivefold in a two decade span ending in 2001; the increase occurred because of increased prosecutions and convictions of offenses related to recreational drugs, increases in the severities of offenses, and a lack of community sanctions and treatment for women who violate laws.[84] In the United States, authorities began housing women in correctional facilities separate from men in the 1870s.[85]
In 2013, there were 628,900 adult males in local jails in the United States, and 1,463,500 adult males in state and federal prisons.[2] In a study of sentencing in the United States in 1984, David B. Mustard found that males received 12 percent longer prison terms than females after "controlling for the offense level, criminal history, district, and offense type," and noted that "females receive even shorter sentences relative to men than whites relative to blacks."[86] A later study by Sonja B. Starr found sentences for men to be up to 60% higher when controlling for more variables.[87] Several explanations for this disparity have been offered, including that women have more to lose from incarceration, and that men are the targets of discrimination in sentencing.[88]
Youth
Census of juveniles in residential placement, 1997–2013.[9] | |||
---|---|---|---|
Year | Male | Female | Total |
1997 | 90,771 | 14,284 | 105,055 |
1999 | 92,985 | 14,508 | 107,493 |
2001 | 89,115 | 15,104 | 104,219 |
2003 | 81,975 | 14,556 | 96,531 |
2006 | 78,998 | 13,723 | 92,721 |
2007 | 75,017 | 11,797 | 86,814 |
2010 | 61,359 | 9,434 | 70,793 |
2011 | 53,079 | 8,344 | 61,423 |
2013 | 46,421 | 7,727 | 54,148 |
Through the juvenile courts and the adult criminal justice system, the United States incarcerates more of its youth than any other country in the world, a reflection of the larger trends in incarceration practices in the United States. This has been a source of controversy for a number of reasons, including the overcrowding and violence in youth detention facilities, the prosecution of youths as adults and the long term consequences of incarceration on the individual's chances for success in adulthood. In 2014, the United Nations Human Rights Committee criticized the United States for about ten judicial abuses, including the mistreatment of juvenile inmates.[89] A UN report published in 2015 criticized the US for being the only nation in the world to sentence juveniles to life imprisonment without parole.[90]
According to federal data from 2011, around 40% of the nation's juvenile inmates are housed in private facilities.[91]
The incarceration of youths has been linked to the effects of family and neighborhood influences. One study found that the "behaviors of family members and neighborhood peers appear to substantially affect the behavior and outcomes of disadvantaged youths".[92]
Aged
The percentage of prisoners in federal and state prisons aged 55 and older increased by 33% from 2000 to 2005 while the prison population grew by 8%. The Southern Legislative Conference found that in 16 southern states the elderly prisoner population increased on average by 145% between 1997 and 2007. The growth in the elderly population brought along higher health care costs, most notably seen in the 10% average increase in state prison budgets from 2005 to 2006.
The SLC expects the percentage of elderly prisoners relative to the overall prison population to continue to rise. Ronald Aday, a professor of aging studies at Middle Tennessee State University and author of Aging Prisoners: Crisis in American Corrections, concurs. One out of six prisoners in California is serving a life sentence. Aday predicts that by 2020 16% percent of those serving life sentences will be elderly.[93][94]
State governments pay all of their inmates' housing costs which significantly increase as prisoners age. Inmates are unable to apply for Medicare and Medicaid. Most Departments of Correction report spending more than 10 percent of the annual budget on elderly care.[93][94]
The American Civil Liberties Union published a report in 2012 which asserts that the elderly prison population has climbed 1300% since the 1980s, with 125,000 inmates aged 55 or older now incarcerated.[95]
LGBT people
Transgender adults and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender) youth are disproportionately more likely than the general population to come into contact with the criminal justice system. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, 16 percent of transgender adults have been in prison and/or jail, compared to 2.7 percent of all adults.[96] It has also been found that 13-15 percent of youth in detention identify as LGBT, whereas an estimated 4-8 percent of the general youth population identify as such.[97]
The reasons behind these disproportionate numbers are multi-faceted and complex. Poverty, homelessness, profiling by law enforcement, and imprisonment are disproportionately experienced by transgender and gender non-conforming people.[97] LGBT youth not only experience these same challenges, but many also live in homes unwelcoming to their identities.[98] This often results in LGBT youth running away and/or engaging in criminal activities, such as the drug trade, sex work, and/or theft, which places them at higher risk for arrest. Because of discriminatory practices and limited access to resources, transgender adults are also more likely to engage in criminal activities to be able to pay for housing, health care, and other basic needs.[98]
LGBT people in jail and prison are particularly vulnerable to mistreatment by other inmates and staff. This mistreatment includes solitary confinement (which may be described as "protective custody"), physical and sexual violence, verbal abuse, and denial of medical care and other services.[96][99] According to the National Inmate Survey, in 2011-12, 40 percent of transgender inmates reported sexual victimization compared to 4 percent of all inmates.[100]
Mental illness
In the United States, the percentage of inmates with mental illness has been steadily increasing, with rates more than quadrupling from 1998 to 2006.[101] Many have attributed this trend to the deinstitutionalization of mentally ill persons beginning in the 1960s, when mental hospitals across the country began closing their doors.[102][103] However, other researchers indicate that "there is no evidence for the basic criminalization premise that decreased psychiatric services explain the disproportionate risk of incarceration for individuals with mental illness".[104]
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, over half of all prisoners in 2005 had experienced mental illness as identified by "a recent history or symptoms of a mental health problem"; of this population, jail inmates experienced the highest rates of symptoms of mental illness at 60 percent, followed by 49 percent of state prisoners and 40 percent of federal prisoners.[105] Not only do people with recent histories of mental illness end up incarcerated, but many who have no history of mental illness end up developing symptoms while in prison. In 2006, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that a quarter of state prisoners had a history of mental illness, whereas 3 in 10 state prisoners had developed symptoms of mental illness since becoming incarcerated with no recent history of mental illness.[105]
According to Human Rights Watch, one of the contributing factors to the disproportionate rates of mental illness in prisons and jails is the increased use of solitary confinement, for which "socially and psychologically meaningful contact is reduced to the absolute minimum, to a point that is insufficient for most detainees to remain mentally well functioning".[106] Another factor to be considered is that most inmates do not get the mental health services that they need while incarcerated. Due to limited funding, prisons are not able to provide a full range of mental health services and thus are typically limited to inconsistent administration of psychotropic medication, or no psychiatric services at all.[103][106] Human Rights Watch also reports that corrections officers routinely use excessive violence against mentally ill inmates for nonthreatening behaviors related to schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Inmates are often shocked, shackled and pepper sprayed.[107]
Although many argue that prisons have become the facilities for the mentally ill, very few crimes point directly to symptoms of mental illness as their sole cause.[106][108] Despite the disproportionate representation of mentally ill persons in prison, a study by American Psychological Association indicates that only 7.5 percent of crimes committed were found to be directly related to mental illness.[108] However, some advocates argue that many incarcerations of mentally ill persons could have been avoided if they had been given proper treatment,[101][102][109] which would be a much less costly alternative to incarceration.[101]
Mental illness rarely stands alone when analyzing the risk factors associated with incarceration and recidivism rates.[105][108] The American Psychological Association recommends a holistic approach to reducing recidivism rates among offenders by providing "cognitive– behavioral treatment focused on criminal cognition" or " services that target variable risk factors for high-risk offenders" due to the numerous intersecting risk factors experienced by mentally ill and non-mentally ill offenders alike.[108]
To prevent the recidivism of individuals with mental illness, a variety of programs are in place that are based on criminal justice or mental health intervention models. Programs modeled after criminal justice strategies include diversion programs, mental health courts, specialty mental health probation or parole, and jail aftercare/prison re-entry. Programs modeled after mental health interventions include forensic assertive community treatment and forensic intensive case management. It is argued that the wide diversity of these program interventions points to a lack of clarity on which specific program components are most effective in reducing recidivism rates among individuals with mental illness.[104]
Transfer treaty
The BOP receives all prisoner transfer treaty inmates sent from foreign countries, even if their crimes would have been, if committed in the United States, tried in state, DC, or territorial courts.[110] Non-US citizens incarcerated in federal and state prisons are eligible to be transferred to their home countries if they qualify.[111]
Operational
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/U.S._federal_prisoner_distribution_since_1950.png/220px-U.S._federal_prisoner_distribution_since_1950.png)
Security levels
This section needs additional citations for verification. (November 2012) |
In various, but not all, states' department of corrections, inmates reside in different facilities that vary by security level, especially in security measures, administration of inmates, type of housing, and weapons and tactics used by corrections officers. The federal government's Bureau of Prisons uses a numbered scale from one to five to represent the security level. Level five is the most secure, while level one is the least. State prison systems operate similar systems. California, for example, classifies its facilities from Reception Center through Levels I to V (minimum to maximum security) to specialized high security units (all considered Level V) including Security Housing Unit (SHU)—California's version of supermax—and related units. As a general rule, county jails, detention centers, and reception centers, where new commitments are first held while either awaiting trial or before being transferred to "mainline" institutions to serve out their sentences, operate at a relatively high level of security, usually close security or higher.
Supermax Prison facilities provide the highest level of prison security. These units hold those considered the most dangerous inmates, as well as inmates that have been deemed too high-profile or too great a national security risk for a normal prison. These include inmates who have committed assaults, murders, or other serious violations in less secure facilities, and inmates known to be or accused of being prison gang members. Most states have either a supermax section of a prison facility or an entire prison facility designated as a supermax. The United States Federal Bureau of Prisons operates a federal supermax, A.D.X. Florence, located in Florence, Colorado, also known as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies" and widely considered to be perhaps the most secure prison in the United States. A.D.X. Florence has a standard supermax section where assaultive, violent, and gang-related inmates are kept under normal supermax conditions of 23-hour confinement and abridged amenities. A.D.X. Florence is considered to be of a security level above that of all other prisons in the United States, at least in the "ideological" ultramax part of it, which features permanent, 24-hour solitary confinement with rare human contacts or opportunity to earn better conditions through good behavior.
In a maximum security prison or area (called high security in the federal system), all prisoners have individual cells[112] with sliding doors controlled from a secure remote control station. Prisoners are allowed out of their cells one out of twenty four hours (one hour and 30 minutes for prisoners in California). When out of their cells, prisoners remain in the cell block or an exterior cage. Movement out of the cell block or "pod" is tightly restricted using restraints and escorts by correctional officers.
Under close security, prisoners usually have one- or two-person cells operated from a remote control station. Each cell has its own toilet and sink. Inmates may leave their cells for work assignments or correctional programs and otherwise may be allowed in a common area in the cellblock or an exercise yard. The fences are generally double fences with watchtowers housing armed guards, plus often a third, lethal-current electric fence in the middle.
Prisoners that fall into the medium security group may sleep in cells, but share them two and two, and use bunk beds[112] with lockers to store their possessions. They may have communal showers, toilets and sinks. Cells are locked at night with one or more correctional officers supervising. There is less supervision over the internal movements of prisoners. The perimeter is generally double fenced and regularly patrolled.
Prisoners in minimum security facilities are considered to pose little physical risk to the public and are mainly non-violent "white collar criminals". Minimum security prisoners live in less-secure dormitories,[112] which are regularly patrolled by correctional officers. As in medium security facilities, they have communal showers, toilets, and sinks. A minimum-security facility generally has a single fence that is watched, but not patrolled, by armed guards. At facilities in very remote and rural areas, there may be no fence at all. Prisoners may often work on community projects, such as roadside litter cleanup with the state department of transportation or wilderness conservation. Many minimum security facilities are small camps located in or near military bases, larger prisons (outside the security perimeter) or other government institutions to provide a convenient supply of convict labor to the institution. Many states allow persons in minimum-security facilities access to the Internet.
Correspondence
Research indicates that inmates who maintain contact with family and friends in the outside world are less likely to be convicted of further crimes and usually have an easier reintegration period back into society.[citation needed] Many institutions encourage friends and families to send letters, especially when they are unable to visit regularly. However, guidelines exist as to what constitutes acceptable mail, and these policies are strictly enforced.
Mail sent to inmates in violation of prison policies can result in sanctions such as loss of imprisonment time reduced for good behavior. Most Department of Corrections websites provide detailed information regarding mail policies. These rules can even vary within a single prison depending on which part of the prison an inmate is housed. For example, death row and maximum security inmates are usually under stricter mail guidelines for security reasons.
There have been several notable challenges to prison corresponding services. The Missouri Department of Corrections (DOC) stated that effective June 1, 2007, inmates would be prohibited from using pen pal websites, citing concerns that inmates were using them to solicit money and defraud the public.[113] Service providers such as WriteAPrisoner.com, together with the ACLU, plan to challenge the ban in Federal Court. Similar bans on an inmate's rights or a website's right to post such information has been ruled unconstitutional in other courts, citing First Amendment freedoms.[114] Some faith-based initiatives promote the positive effects of correspondence on inmates, and some have made efforts to help ex-offenders reintegrate into society through job placement assistance.[115] Inmates' ability to mail letters to other inmates has been limited by the courts.[116] Inmate correspondence with members of society is typically encouraged because of the positive impact it can have on inmates, albeit under the guidelines of each institution and availability of letter writers.[citation needed]
Conditions
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/Prison_crowded.jpg/400px-Prison_crowded.jpg)
The non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch claims that prisoners and detainees face "abusive, degrading and dangerous" conditions within local, state and federal facilities, including those operated by for-profit contractors.[118] The organization also raised concerns with prisoner rape and medical care for inmates.[119] In a survey of 1,788 male inmates in Midwestern prisons by Prison Journal, about 21% responded they had been coerced or pressured into sexual activity during their incarceration, and 7% that they had been raped in their current facility.[120]
In August 2003, a Harper's article by Wil S. Hylton estimated that "somewhere between 20 and 40% of American prisoners are, at this very moment, infected with hepatitis C".[121] Prisons may outsource medical care to private companies such as Correctional Medical Services (now Corizon) that, according to Hylton's research, try to minimize the amount of care given to prisoners in order to maximize profits.[121][122] After the privatization of healthcare in Arizona's prisons, medical spending fell by 30 million dollars and staffing was greatly reduced. Some 50 prisoners died in custody in the first 8 months of 2013, compared to 37 for the preceding two years combined.[123]
The poor quality of food provided to inmates has become an issue, as over the last decade corrections officials looking to cut costs have been outsourcing food services to private, for profit corporations such as Aramark, A'Viands Food & Services Management, and ABL Management.[124] A prison riot in Kentucky has been blamed on the low quality of food Aramark provided to inmates.[125]
Also identified as an issue within the prison system is gang violence, because many gang members retain their gang identity and affiliations when imprisoned. Segregation of identified gang members from the general population of inmates, with different gangs being housed in separate units often results in the imprisonment of these gang members with their friends and criminal cohorts. Some feel this has the effect of turning prisons into "institutions of higher criminal learning."[126]
Many prisons in the United States are overcrowded. For example, California's 33 prisons have a total capacity of 100,000, but they hold 170,000 inmates.[127] Many prisons in California and around the country are forced to turn old gymnasiums and classrooms into huge bunkhouses for inmates. They do this by placing hundreds of bunk beds next to one another, in these gyms, without any type of barriers to keep inmates separated. In California, the inadequate security engendered by this situation, coupled with insufficient staffing levels, have led to increased violence and a prison health system that causes one death a week. This situation has led the courts to order California to release 27% of the current prison population, citing the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.[128] The three-judge court considering requests by the Plata v. Schwarzenegger and Coleman v. Schwarzenegger courts found California's prisons have become criminogenic as a result of prison overcrowding.[129]
In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court case of Cutter v. Wilkinson established that prisons that received federal funds could not deny prisoners accommodations necessary for religious practices.
According to a Supreme Court ruling issued on May 23, 2011, California — which has the highest overcrowding rate of any prison system in the country — must alleviate overcrowding in the state's prisons, reducing the prisoner population by 30,000 over the next two years.[130][131][132][133]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/57/Inmates_Orleans_Parish_Prison.jpg/300px-Inmates_Orleans_Parish_Prison.jpg)
Solitary confinement is widely used in US prisons, yet it is underreported by most states, while some don't report it at all. Isolation of prisoners has been condemned by the UN in 2011 as a form of torture. At over 80,000 at any given time, the US has more prisoners confined in isolation than any other country in the world. In Louisiana, with 843 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, there have been prisoners, such as the Angola Three, held for as long as forty years in isolation.[134][135]
In 1999, the Supreme Court of Norway refused to extradite American hashish-smuggler Henry Hendricksen, as they declared that US prisons do not meet their minimum humanitarian standards.[136]
In 2011, some 885 people died while being held in local jails (not in prisons after being convicted of a crime and sentenced) throughout the United States.[137]
As of September 2013, condoms for prisoners are only available in the U.S. State of Vermont (on September 17, 2013, the California Senate approved a bill for condom distribution inside the state's prisons, but the bill was not yet law at the time of approval).[138]
In September 2016, a group of corrections officers at Holman Correctional Facility have gone on strike over safety concerns and overcrowding. Prisoners refer to the facility as a "slaughterhouse" as stabbings are a routine occurrence.[139]
Privatization
Prior to the 1980s, private prisons did not exist in the U.S. In the 1980s, as a result of the War on Drugs by the Reagan Administration, the number of people incarcerated rose. This created a demand for more prison space. The result was the development of privatization and the for-profit prison industry.[140][141][142]
A 1998 study, was performed using three comparable Louisiana medium security prisons, two of which were privately run by different corporations and the third was publicly run. The data from this study suggests the privately run prisons operated more cost-effectively without sacrificing the safety of inmates and staff. The study concluded that the privately run prisons had a lower cost per inmate, fewer critical incidents, a safer environment for employees and inmates, and a higher proportional rate of inmates who complete basic education, literacy, and vocational training courses. However, the publicly run prison outperformed the privately run prisons in areas such as fewer escape attempts, controlling substance abuse through testing, offered a wider range of educational and vocational courses, and provided a broader range of treatment, recreation, social services, and rehabilitative services.[143]
According to Marie Gottschalk, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, studies that claim private prisons are cheaper fail to "take into account the fundamental differences between private and public facilities," and that the prison industry "engages in a lot of cherry-picking and cost-shifting to maintain the illusion that the private sector does it better for less."[144] The American Civil Liberties Union reported in 2013 that numerous studies indicate private jails are actually filthier, more violent, less accountable, and possibly more costly than their public counterparts. The ACLU stated that the for-profit prison industry is "a major contributor to bloated state budgets and mass incarceration – not a part of any viable solution to these urgent problems."[145] The primary reason Louisiana is the prison capital of the world is because of the for-profit prison industry.[146] According to The Times-Picayune, "a majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt."[146]
In Mississippi, a 2013 Bloomberg report, states that assault rates in private facilities were three times higher on average than in their public counterparts. In 2012, the for-profit Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility was the most violent prison in the state, and had 27 assaults per 100 offenders.[147] A federal lawsuit filed by the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of prisoners at the privately run East Mississippi Correctional Facility in 2013 claims the conditions there are "hyper-violent," "barbaric" and "chaotic," with gangs routinely beating and exploiting mentally ill inmates who are denied medical care by prison staff.[148][149] A May 2012 riot in the Corrections Corporation of America-run Adams County Correctional Facility, also in Mississippi, left one corrections officer dead and dozens injured. Similar riots have occurred in privatized facilities in Idaho, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Florida, California and Texas.[150][151][152]
Sociologist John L. Campbell of Dartmouth College claims that private prisons in the U.S. have become "a lucrative business."[153] Between 1990 and 2000, the number of private facilities grew from five to 100, operated by nearly 20 private firms. Over the same time period the stock price of the industry leader, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), climbed from $8 a share to $30.[153] According to journalist Matt Taibbi, major investors in the prison industry include Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Fidelity Investments, General Electric and The Vanguard Group.[154] The aforementioned Bloomberg report also notes that in the past decade the number of inmates in for-profit prisons throughout the U.S. rose 44 percent.[147]
Controversy has surrounded the privatization of prisons with the exposure of the genesis of the landmark Arizona SB 1070 law. This law was written by Arizona State Congressman Russell Pearce and the CCA at a meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C.[155][156] Both CCA and GEO Group, the two largest operators of private facilities, have been contributors to ALEC, which lobbies for policies that would increase incarceration, such as three-strike laws and "truth-in-sentencing" legislation.[157][158][159][160][161] In face, in the early 1990s, when CCA was co-chair of ALEC, it co-sponsored (with the National Rifle Association) the so-called "truth-in-sentencing" and "three-strikes-you're-out" laws.[162] Truth-in-sentencing called for all violent offenders to serve 85 percent of their sentences before being eligible for release; three strikes called for mandatory life imprisonment for a third felony conviction. Some prison officers unions in publicly run facilities such as California Correctional Peace Officers Association have, in the past, also supported measures such as three-strike laws. Such laws increased the prison population.[163][164]
In addition to CCA and GEO Group, companies operating in the private prison business include Management and Training Corporation, and Community Education Centers. The GEO Group was formerly known as the Wackenhut Corrections division. It includes the former Correctional Services Corporation and Cornell Companies, which were purchased by GEO in 2005 and 2010. Such companies often sign contracts with states obliging them to fill prison beds or reimburse them for those that go unused.[165]
Private companies which provide services to prisons combine in the American Correctional Association, a 501(c)3 which advocates legislation favorable to the industry. Such private companies comprise what has been termed the prison–industrial complex.[141][166][167][168] An example of this phenomenon would be the Kids for cash scandal, in which two judges in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, were receiving judicial kickbacks for sending youths, convicted of minor crimes,[169] to a privatized, for-profit juvenile facility run by the Mid Atlantic Youth Service Corporation.[159]
The industry is aware of what reduced crime rates could mean to their bottom line. This from the CCA's SEC report in 2010:
Our growth … depends on a number of factors we cannot control, including crime rates …[R]eductions in crime rates … could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities.[145]
Marie Gottschalk claims that while private prison companies and other economic interests were not the primary drivers of mass incarceration originally, they do much to sustain it today.[170] The private prison industry has successfully lobbied for changes that increase the profit of their employers. They have opposed measures that would bring reduced sentencing or shorter prison terms.[171][172] The private prison industry has been accused of being at least partly responsible for America's high rates of incarceration.[173]
According to The Corrections Yearbook, 2000, the average annual starting salary for public corrections officers was $23,002, compared to $17,628 for private prison guards. The poor pay is a likely factor in the high turnover rate in private prisons, at 52.2 percent compared to 16 percent in public facilities.[174]
In September 2015, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the "Justice Is Not for Sale" Act,[175] which would prohibit the United States government at federal, state and local levels from contracting with private firms to provide and/or operate detention facilities within two years.[176]
An August 2016 report by the U.S. Department of Justice asserts that privately operated federal facilities are less safe, less secure and more punitive than other federal prisons.[177] Shortly after this report was published, the DoJ announced it will stop using private prisons.[178]
Employment
About 18% of eligible prisoners held in federal prisons are employed by UNICOR and are paid less than $1.25 an hour.[179][180][181] Prisons have gradually become a source of low-wage labor for corporations seeking to outsource work to inmates.[153] Corporations that utilize prison labor include Walmart, Eddie Bauer, Victoria's Secret, Microsoft, Starbucks, McDonald's, Nintendo, Chevron Corporation, Bank of America, Koch Industries, Boeing and Costco Wholesale.[182][183][184][185]
It is estimated that 1 in 9 state government employees works in corrections.[23] As the overall U.S. prison population declined in 2010, states are closing prisons. For instance, Virginia has removed 11 prisons since 2009. Like other small towns, Boydton in Virginia has to contend with unemployment woes resulting from the closure of the Mecklenburg Correctional Center.[186]
Starting in September 2016, large, coordinated prison strikes are currently taking place place in 11 states, with inmates claiming they are subjected to poor sanitary conditions and jobs that amount to forced labor.[187][188][189] Organizers, which include the Industrial Workers of the World labor union, assert it is the largest prison strike in U.S. history.[187]
Cost
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/US_criminal_justice_cost_timeline.gif)
Judicial, police, and corrections costs totaled $212 billion in 2011 according to the U.S. Census Bureau.[192] In 2007, around $74 billion was spent on corrections according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.[190][191]
In 2014, among facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the average cost of incarceration for federal inmates in fiscal year 2014 was $30,619.85. The average annual cost to confine an inmate in a residential re-entry center was $28,999.25.[193]
State prisons averaged $31,286 per inmate in 2010 according to a Vera Institute of Justice study. It ranged from $14,603 in Kentucky to $60,076 in New York.[194]
In California in 2008, it cost the state an average of $47,102 a year to incarcerate an inmate in a state prison. From 2001 to 2009, the average annual cost increased by about $19,500.[195]
Housing the approximately 500,000 people in jail in the US awaiting trial who cannot afford bail costs $9 billion a year.[196] Most jail inmates are petty, nonviolent offenders. Twenty years ago most nonviolent defendants were released on their own recognizance (trusted to show up at trial). Now most are given bail, and most pay a bail bondsman to afford it.[197] 62% of local jail inmates are awaiting trial.[198]
Bondsmen have lobbied to cut back local pretrial programs from Texas to California, pushed for legislation in four states limiting pretrial's resources, and lobbied Congress so that they won't have to pay the bond if the defendant commits a new crime. Behind them, the bondsmen have powerful special interest group and millions of dollars. Pretrial release agencies have a smattering of public employees and the remnants of their once-thriving programs.
— National Public Radio, January 22, 2010.[199]
To ease jail overcrowding over 10 counties every year consider building new jails. As an example Lubbock County, Texas has decided to build a $110 million megajail to ease jail overcrowding. Jail costs an average of $60 a day nationally.[197][200] In Broward County, Florida supervised pretrial release costs about $7 a day per person while jail costs $115 a day. The jail system costs a quarter of every county tax dollar in Broward County, and is the single largest expense to the county taxpayer.[199]
The National Association of State Budget Officers reports: "In fiscal 2009, corrections spending represented 3.4 percent of total state spending and 7.2 percent of general fund spending." They also report: "Some states exclude certain items when reporting corrections expenditures. Twenty-one states wholly or partially excluded juvenile delinquency counseling from their corrections figures and fifteen states wholly or partially excluded spending on juvenile institutions. Seventeen states wholly or partially excluded spending on drug abuse rehabilitation centers and forty-one states wholly or partially excluded spending on institutions for the criminally insane. Twenty-two states wholly or partially excluded aid to local governments for jails. For details, see Table 36."[201]
As of 2007[update], the cost of medical care for inmates was growing by 10 percent annually.[22][23]
According to a 2016 study by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, the true cost of incarceration exceeds $1 trillion, with half of that falling on the families, children and communities of those incarcerated.[202]
Effects of incarceration
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/eb/Property_Crime_Rates_in_the_United_States.svg/300px-Property_Crime_Rates_in_the_United_States.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Violent_crime_rates_by_gender_1973-2003.jpg/300px-Violent_crime_rates_by_gender_1973-2003.jpg)
Within three years of being released, 67% of ex-prisoners re-offend and 52% are re-incarcerated, according to a study published in 1994.[204] The rate of recidivism is so high in the United States that most inmates who enter the system are likely to reenter within a year of their release. Former inmate Wenona Thompson argues "I realized that I became part of a cycle, a system, that looked forward to seeing me there. And I was aware that...I would be one of those people who fill up their prisons".[205]
In 1995, the government allocated $5.1 billion for new prison space. Every $100 million spent in construction costs $53 million per year in finance and operational costs over the next three decades.[206] Taxpayers spend $60 billion a year for prisons. In 2005, it cost an average of $23,876 a year to house a prisoner.[207] It takes about $30,000 per year per person to provide drug rehabilitation treatment to inmates. By contrast, the cost of drug rehabilitation treatment outside of a prison costs about $8,000 per year per person.[205]
American journalist Reihan Salam has argued in National Review Online that past a certain point in which more of the population have been or are currently in prison, incarceration becomes more destigmatized and crime would actually increase (akin to the Laffer curve). He argues that the U.S. "appear[s] to be past that point" with its incarceration rate.[208]
The effects of such high incarceration rates are also shown in other ways. For example, a woman who has been recently released from prison is ineligible for welfare in most states. She is not eligible for subsidized housing, and for Section 8 she has to wait two years before she can apply. In addition to finding housing, she also has to find employment, but most likely she can not find a job because she has a criminal record so no one wants to hire her. Essentially, a woman who has been recently released from prison comes into a society that is not prepared structurally or emotionally to welcome her back.[205]
Marc Mauer, assistant director of the non-profit group Sentencing Project, has remarked that "[...] what we don't see are the ripple effects of what they mean: For the generation of black children today, there's almost an inevitable aspect of going to prison".[209] For every mother that is incarcerated in the United States there are about another ten people (children, grandparents, community, etc.) that are directly affected.[210] Children are becoming more affected by having a parent in prison. Having an incarcerated parent affects children in "separation experiences and associated risks".[211] In a recent study, approximately 75% of the children reported symptoms including "depression, difficulty sleeping, concentration problems, and flashbacks about their mothers' crimes or arrests".[212]
In The New Jim Crow in 2011, legal scholar and advocate Michelle Alexander contended that the U.S. incarceration system worked to bar black men from voting. She wrote "there are more African Americans under correctional control -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began".[213] Alexander's work has drawn increased attention through 2011 and into 2013.
Yale Law Professor, and opponent of mass incarceration James Forman Jr. has countered that 1) African Americans, as represented by such cities as the District of Columbia, have generally supported tough on crime policies. 2) There appears to be a connection between drugs and violent crimes, the discussion of which, he says, New Jim Crow theorists have avoided. 3) New theorists have overlooked class as a factor in incarceration. Blacks with advanced degrees have fewer convictions. Blacks without advanced education have more.[214]
Proposed solutions
Mass incarceration cannot be remedied in a short length of time, because each prisoner serves a separate sentence, the average length of sentences has risen over the last 35 years and public support for prison reform is still relatively low. Decriminalizing drugs has been suggested by libertarians, but remains a remote political option. Additional parole and probation can be facilitated with enhanced electronic monitoring, though monitoring is expensive. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld prisoner releases to relieve California's unconstitutional prison conditions in Brown v. Plata, long-standing litigation wherein the federal courts intervened as they have done in most states through the years.
There is greater indication that education in prison helps prevent reincarceration.[215]
Criticism
Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today—perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850.
High rates of incarceration may be due to sentence length, which is further driven by many other factors.[217] Shorter sentences may even diminish the criminal culture by possibly reducing re-arrest rates for first-time convicts.[218] The U.S. Congress has ordered federal judges to make imprisonment decisions "recognizing that imprisonment is not an appropriate means of promoting correction and rehabilitation."[219]
Critics have lambasted the United States for incarcerating a large number of non-violent and victimless offenders;[220][221] half of all persons incarcerated under state jurisdiction are for non-violent offenses, and 20% are incarcerated for drug offenses (in state prisons; federal prison percentages are higher).[50][222] "Human Rights Watch believes the extraordinary rate of incarceration in the United States wreaks havoc on individuals, families and communities, and saps the strength of the nation as a whole."[220] The population of inmates housed in prisons and jails in the United States exceeds 2 million, with the per capita incarceration population higher than that officially reported by any other country.[23] Criminal justice policy in the United States has also been criticized for a number of other reasons.[223] In the 2014 book The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, journalist Matt Taibbi argues that the expanding disparity of wealth and the increasing criminalization of those in poverty have culminated in the U.S. having the largest prison population "in the history of human civilization."[224] The scholars Michael Meranze and Marie Gottschalk contend that the massive "carceral state" extends far beyond prisons, and distorts democracy, degrades society, and obstructs meaningful discourse on criminal punishment.[225]
Some scholars have linked the ascent of neoliberal, free market ideology in the late 1970s to mass incarceration.[141][153][226][227][228][229] Sociologist Loïc Wacquant postulates the expansive prison system has become a political institution designed to deal with an urban crisis created by welfare state retrenchment and economic deregulation, and that this "overgrown and intrusive penal state" is "deeply injurious to the ideals of democratic citizenship."[230] Academic and activist Angela Davis argues that prisons in the U.S. have "become venues of profit as well as punishment;" as mass incarceration has increased, the prison system has become more about economic factors than criminality.[231] Professor of Law at Columbia University Bernard Harcourt contends that neoliberalism holds the state as incompetent when it comes to economic regulation but proficient at policing and punishing, and that this paradox has resulted in the expansion of penal confinement.[232] According to The Routledge Handbook of Poverty in the United States, "neoliberal social and economic policy has more deeply embedded the carceral state within the lives of the poor, transforming what it means to be poor in America."[233]
Our vast network of federal and state prisons, with some 2.3 million inmates, rivals the gulags of totalitarian states.
Reporting at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (August 3, 2008), Becky Pettit, associate professor of sociology from the University of Washington and Bryan Sykes, a UW post-doctoral researcher, revealed that the mammoth increase in the United States's prison population since the 1970s is having profound demographic consequences that affect 1 in 50 Americans. Drawing data from a variety of sources that looked at prison and general populations, the researchers found that the boom in prison population is hiding lowered rates of fertility and increased rates of involuntary migration to rural areas and morbidity that is marked by a greater exposure to and risk of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV or AIDS.[235]
Guilty plea bargains concluded 97% of all federal cases in 2011.[236]
As of December 2012[update], two state prison systems, Alabama and South Carolina, segregated prisoners based on their HIV status. On December 21, U.S. District Court Judge Myron Thompson ruled in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of several inmates that Alabama's practice in doing so violated federal disabilities law. He noted the state's "outdated and unsupported assumptions about HIV and the prison system's ability to deal with HIV-positive prisoners."[237]
Department of Justice Smart on Crime Program
On August 12, 2013, at the American Bar Association's House of Delegates meeting, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the "Smart on Crime" program, which is "a sweeping initiative by the Justice Department that in effect renounces several decades of tough-on-crime anti-drug legislation and policies."[238][239] Holder said the program "will encourage U.S. attorneys to charge defendants only with crimes "for which the accompanying sentences are better suited to their individual conduct, rather than excessive prison terms more appropriate for violent criminals or drug kingpins…"[238][239] Running through Holder's statements, the increasing economic burden of over-incarceration was stressed.[238][239] As of August 2013[update], the Smart on Crime program is not a legislative initiative but an effort "limited to the DOJ's policy parameters."[238][239]
Strip searches and cavity searches
The procedural use of strip searches and cavity searches in the prison system has raised human rights concerns.[240]
Federal prisons
The Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice, is responsible for the administration of United States federal prisons.
States and insular areas
Imprisonment by the state judicial systems has steadily diminished since 2006 to 2012, from 689,536 annually to 553,843 annually.[241]
See also
- United States incarceration rate
- Capital punishment in the United States
- Religion in United States prisons
- Prisoner rights in the United States
- Prison gangs in the United States
- Social groups in male and female prisons in the United States
- History of United States Prison Systems
- Administration
- Conditions of confinement
- Controversies
- Prison advocacy groups
- Related
- Parole in the United States
- Crime in the United States
- United States cities by crime rate
- Law enforcement in the United States
- List of detention sites in the United States
- Penal labor in the United States
- Civilian noninstitutional population
- Human rights in the United States#Prison system
- Statistics of incarcerated African-American males
- Race in the United States criminal justice system
- Race and the War on Drugs
- Race and crime
- Racial profiling in the United States
- By state
References
This article needs additional citations for verification. (December 2013) |
- ^ a b c Correctional Populations in the United States, 2010 (NCJ 236319). By Lauren E. Glaze, BJS Statistician. US Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), published December 2011. See PDF. See page 2 for explanation of the difference between number of prisoners in custody and the number under jurisdiction. See appendix table 3 for "Estimated number of inmates held in custody in state or federal prisons or in local jails per 100,000 U.S. residents, by sex, race and Hispanic/Latino origin, and age, June 30, 2010". See appendix table 2 for "Inmates held in custody in state or federal prisons or in local jails, December 31, 2000, and 2009–2010."
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Correctional Populations in the United States, 2013 (NCJ 248479). Published December 2014 by U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). By Lauren E. Glaze and Danielle Kaeble, BJS statisticians. See PDF. See page 1 "highlights" section for the "1 in ..." numbers. See table 1 on page 2 for adult numbers. See table 5 on page 6 for male and female numbers. See appendix table 5 on page 13, for "Estimated number of persons supervised by adult correctional systems, by correctional status, 2000–2013." See appendix table 2: "Inmates held in custody in state or federal prisons or in local jails, 2000 and 2012–2013".
- ^ a b c d e f Entire world – Prison Population Rates per 100,000 of the national population. Highest to Lowest Rates. For more details about the figures of any country, click on the name of that country. World Prison Brief. International Centre for Prison Studies. See this page for breakdowns by region, whole world, prison population total, prison population rate, percentage of pre-trial detainees / remand prisoners, percentage of female prisoners, percentage of foreign prisoners, and occupancy rate.
- ^ Incarcerated In America: Why Are So Many People In US Prisons? (CHARTS). International Business Times. March 19, 2014. By Lisa Mahapatra. Chart showing incarceration rates of 50 most populous countries. Another chart showing what the inmates in the US are in for (does not indicate reasons for probation and parole violations. Those offenses, such as drug tests, etc. change the breakdown of what inmates are in for).
- ^ National Research Council. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2014. Retrieved May 10, 2014: "The U.S. penal population of 2.2 million adults is by far the largest in the world. Just under one-quarter of the world's prisoners are held in American prisons."
- ^ Seychelles. International Centre for Prison Studies.
- ^ United States of America. International Centre for Prison Studies.
- ^ "Correctional Populations In The United States, 2014" http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5519
- ^ a b c d e Sickmund, M., Sladky, T.J., Kang, W., & Puzzanchera, C.. "Easy Access to the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement". Click "National Crosstabs" at the top, and then choose the census years. Click "Show table" to get the total number of juvenile inmates for those years. Or go here for all the years. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
- ^ Writer, Staff (April 14, 2009). "Debtors' prison – again". The Tampa Bay Times. United States.
- ^ California, State of (2012). "CAL. PEN. CODE § 1205". Find Law.com. California Penal Code.
- ^ Knafo, Saki (February 12, 2014). The U.S. Is Locking People Up For Being Poor. The Huffington Post. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
- ^ Genevieve LeBaron and Adrienne Roberts (March 2012). "Confining Social Insecurity: Neoliberalism and the Rise of the 21st Century Debtors' Prison". Politics & Gender. 8 (01): 25–49. doi:10.1017/S1743923X12000062.
- ^ Timothy Williams (February 11, 2015). Jails Have Become Warehouses for the Poor, Ill and Addicted, a Report Says. The New York Times. Retrieved February 11, 2015.
- ^ Nation Behind Bars: A Human Rights Solution. Human Rights Watch, May 2014. Retrieved May 8, 2014.
- ^ "Why Texas is closing prisons in favour of rehab". BBC News.
- ^ Oliver Laughland (February 12, 2015). Mass incarceration does not explain dramatic fall in US crime, study finds. The Guardian. Retrieved February 14, 2015.
- ^ Emma Brown and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel (July 7, 2016). Since 1980, spending on prisons has grown three times as much as spending on public education. The Washington Post. Retrieved July 12, 2016.
- ^ Dix, Dorothea L (1843), Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts 1843, p. 2, retrieved November 12, 2010
- ^ O'Donnell, Jayne. "State time or federal prison?" (Archive). USA Today. March 18, 2004. Retrieved on February 5, 2016.
- ^ a b c Prisoners in 2008. (NCJ 228417). December 2009 report from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). By William J. Sabol, Ph.D. and Heather C. West, Ph.D., BJS Statisticians. Also, Matthew Cooper, BJS Intern. See PDF. Table 9 on page 8 has the number of inmates in state or federal prison facilities, local jails, U.S. territories, military facilities, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) owned and contracted facilities, jails in Indian country, and juvenile facilities (2006 Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement). See 2007 juvenile total here. Table 8 on page 8 has the incarceration rates for 2000, 2007, and 2008.
- ^ a b One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008. February 28, 2008. The Pew Center on the States.
- ^ a b c d e Liptak, Adam (28 Feb 2008). 1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, New Study Says. New York Times.
- ^ Walmsley, Roy (30 Jan 2009). World Prison Population List (8th Edition). From World Prison Population Lists. By International Centre for Prison Studies. "The information is the latest available in early December 2008. … Most figures relate to dates between the beginning of 2006 and the end of November 2008." According to the summary on page one there were 2.29 million U.S. inmates and 9.8 million inmates worldwide. The U.S. held 23.4% of the world's inmates. The U.S. total in this report is for December 31, 2007 (see page 3), and does not include inmates in juvenile detention facilities.
- ^ a b c d West, Heather; Sabol, William (December 2010). "Prisoners in 2009" (PDF). Bureau of Justice Statistics.
- ^ "GAO-05-337R Information on Criminal Aliens Incarcerated in Federal and State Prisons and Local Jails" (PDF). General Accounting Office. April 7, 2005.
- ^ Mauer, Marc; King, Ryan S; Young, Malcolm C (May 2004). "The Meaning of "Life": Long Prison Sentences in Context" (PDF). The Sentencing Project. p. 3.
- ^ a b [1]
- ^ Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002. By Doris J. James. July 18, 2004. NCJ 201932. U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. See Table 3 of the PDF file for the percent of inmates in for violent offenses.
- ^ "Incarcerated America" Human Rights Watch (April 2003)
- ^ United States Crime Rates 1960–2009. Source: FBI, Uniform Crime Reports.
- ^ a b U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics: "Prisoners in 2012 Trends in Admissions and Releases, 1991–2012" by E. Ann Carson and Daniela Golinelli Table 11: Estimated sentenced state prisoners on December 31, by most serious offense and type of admission, 1991, 2001, 2006, and 2011 | December 2013
- ^ Langan, Patrick A.; Levin, David J. (June 2, 2002). "Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1994" (PDF). Bureau of Justice Statistics.
- ^ Population Clock. U.S. Census Bureau.
- ^ Walmsley, Roy (21 Nov 2013). World Prison Population List (tenth edition). From World Prison Population Lists. By International Centre for Prison Studies. From page 1: "Most figures relate to dates between September 2011 and September 2013." And: "More than 10.2 million people are held in penal institutions throughout the world, mostly as pre-trial detainees/remand prisoners or as sentenced prisoners."
- ^ Canada. International Centre for Prison Studies.
- ^ United Kingdom: England & Wales. International Centre for Prison Studies.
- ^ Australia. International Centre for Prison Studies.
- ^ Spain. International Centre for Prison Studies.
- ^ Greece. International Centre for Prison Studies.
- ^ Norway. International Centre for Prison Studies.
- ^ Netherlands. International Centre for Prison Studies.
- ^ Japan. International Centre for Prison Studies.
- ^ American Exception. Inmate Count in US Dwarfs Other Nations'. New York Times. April 22, 2008. Page 1, Section A, Front Page.
- ^ Rosefielde, Steven (2007). The Russian economy: from Lenin to Putin. By Steven Rosefielde. ISBN 978-1-4051-1337-3.
- ^ Applebaum, Anne (2003). Gulag: a history. By Anne Applebaum. ISBN 978-0-7679-0056-0.
- ^ Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr (1973). The Gulag Archipelago. [2].
- ^ Gopnik, Adam (30 January 2012). The Caging of America. The New Yorker.
- ^ Breaking Down Mass Incarceration in the 2010 Census: State-by-State Incarceration Rates by Race/Ethnicity. Briefing by Leah Sakala. May 28, 2014. Prison Policy Initiative. Figures calculated with US Census 2010 SF-1 table P42 and the PCT20 table series.
- ^ a b c Prison Inmates at Midyear 2009 - Statistical Tables (NCJ 230113). Published June 2010, by U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). By Heather C. West, Ph.D., BJS Statistician. See PDF. See tables 18 and 19. The rates are for adults. Rates per 100,000 can be converted to percentages.
- ^ Prison Inmates at Midyear 2009 - Statistical Tables & Prisoners at Yearend 2009 - Advance Counts. Bureau of Justice Statistics, press release June 23, 2010. "Midyear 2009 incarceration rates for inmates held in custody in prisons or jails differed by race and gender. Black males, with an incarceration rate of 4,749 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents, were incarcerated at a rate more than six times higher than white males (708 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents) and 2.6 times higher than Hispanic males (1,822 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents)."
- ^ "Prisoners in 2013" (PDF). Bureau of Justice Statistics. September 30, 2014. Retrieved March 18, 2016.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - ^ Jamaal Bell. Mass Incarceration: A Destroyer of People of Color and Their Communities The Huffington Post. May 17, 2010.
- ^ American Indians and Crime Bureau of Justice Statistics.
- ^ Behind Bars: Native incarceration rates increase. Indianz.com. July 13, 2001.
- ^ Percent of American Indians in jail is high The Bismarck Tribune, February 26, 2009.
- ^ Study of Native American Prisoner Issues. Native American Rights Fund, 1996.
- ^ Rubén G. Rumbaut, Roberto G. Gonzales, Golnaz Komaie, and Charlie V. Morgan. Debunking the Myth of Immigrant Criminality: Imprisonment Among First- and Second-Generation Young Men. Migration Policy Institute. June 1, 2006.
- ^ Ashley Klann. MA Hispanic Incarceration Rate 4th Highest in US. Go Local Worcester, April 29, 2013.
- ^ Sophia Kerby. The Top 10 Most Startling Facts About People of Color and Criminal Justice in the United States. Center for American Progress. March 13, 2012
- ^ Why is the African American Imprisonment Rate Higher than Whites? The Sentencing Project. October 4, 2013.
- ^ ACS DEMOGRAPHIC AND HOUSING ESTIMATES. United States Census Bureau, 2013.
- ^ Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010 Census Briefs. US Census Bureau. See Tables 1 and 2.
- ^ "Hispanic, Black incarceration rates signal trouble ahead". elreporterosf.com. August 3, 2007. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
- ^ "The Sentencing Project : Uneven Justice : State Rates of Incarceration by Race and Ethnicity" (PDF). Sentencingproject.org. Retrieved October 23, 2013.
- ^ "Model Minority? - Society and Culture". AEI. March 3, 2010. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
- ^ SpearIt (April 2, 2015). "How Mass Incarceration Underdevelops Latino Communities". Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - ^ Unz, Ron (March 1, 2010). "His-Panic". The American Conservative. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
- ^ "Hispanics and crime". Half Sigma. March 29, 2011. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
- ^ Andy Nowicki (March 3, 2010). "Model Minority?". Alternativeright.com. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
- ^ "Mapping The Unmentionable: Race And Crime". VDARE.com. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
- ^ "NJ Sends 10 Times as Many Black Men to Prison As Whites! [Archive]". Newark Speaks. July 18, 2007. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
- ^ Audacious Epigone (September 17, 2011). "The Audacious Epigone: Black-white and Hispanic-white incarceration rate ratios by state". Anepigone.blogspot.com. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
- ^ [dubious – discuss]"Study documents possible racial bias in U.S. incarceration". Salt.claretianpubs.org. July 2007. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
- ^ ""Imprisonment Rates Vary Wildly by Race" by Steve Sailer for UPI, 2001, black white hispanic latino prison crime racial differences". Isteve.com. June 14, 2001. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
- ^ [3] Template:Wayback
- ^ Communications Temp (October 28, 2011). "Obama's illegal-immigrant crackdown fills prisons with Hispanics – Fordham Law". Law.fordham.edu. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
- ^ "Latino immigrants and crime". Marginalrevolution.com. February 20, 2010. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
- ^ Patrick Jonsson (October 28, 2011). "Illegal-immigrant crackdown fills prisons with Hispanics". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
- ^ Bennett, Hans (October 22, 2009). "Book Review: Asian-American Prisoners". ColorLines.com. Retrieved August 10, 2013.
- ^ Stephan Thernstrom, Abigail Thernstrom (1997). America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible. ISBN 9780684844978. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
- ^ Simon McCormack. "Nearly Half Of Black Males, 40 Percent Of White Males Are Arrested By Age 23: Study". huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved February 14, 2014.
- ^ Antonio Moore (February 23, 2015). The Black Male Incarceration Problem Is Real and It's Catastrophic. The Huffington Post. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
- ^ Zaitow, Barbara H. and Jim Thomas. Women in Prison: Gender and Social Control. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003. vii. Retrieved from Google Books on March 10, 2011. ISBN 1-58826-228-6, ISBN 978-1-58826-228-8.
- ^ Banks, Cyndi. Women in Prison: A Reference Handbook. ABC-CLIO, 2003. p.1. Retrieved from Google Books on March 10, 2011. ISBN 1-57607-929-5, ISBN 978-1-57607-929-4.
- ^ Mustard, David B. "Racial, ethnic, and gender disparities in sentencing: Evidence from the U.S. Federal Courts". The Journal of Law, Economics & Policy. 285.
- ^ "Men Sentenced to Longer Prison Terms for Same Crimes, Study Says". The Huffington Post.
- ^ Stacey, Ann Martin. "Gender and the Social Costs of Sentencing: An Analysis of Sentences Imposed on Male and Female Offenders in Three U.S. District Courts". Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law.
- ^ Ed Pilkington (March 13, 2014). US criticised by UN for human rights failings on NSA, guns and drones. The Guardian. Retrieved April 5, 2014.
- ^ Natasja Sheriff (March 9, 2015). UN expert slams US as only nation to imprison kids for life without parole. Al Jazeera America. Retrieved March 13, 2015.
- ^ Chris Kirkham (October 22, 2013). Prisoners of Profit: Private Prison Empire Rises Despite Startling Record Of Juvenile Abuse. The Huffington Post. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
- ^ Case, Anne C., and Lawrence F. Katz. The company you keep: The effects of family and neighborhood on disadvantaged youths. No. w3705. National Bureau of Economic Research, 1991.
- ^ a b "Aging inmates clogging nation's prisons". Associated Press. September 30, 2007.
- ^ a b Aday, Ronald H. (2003). Aging Prisoners: Crisis in American Corrections. Praeger. ISBN 0-275-97123-6.
- ^ "Elderly Inmate Population Soared 1,300 Percent Since 1980s: Report". The Huffington Post. June 13, 2012.
- ^ a b Marksamer, Jody; Tobin, Harper (2013). Standing With LGBT Prisoners: An Advocate's Guide to Ending Abuse and Combating Imprisonment (PDF). Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality. pp. 1–88. Retrieved February 14, 2015.
- ^ a b Tobin, Harper (April 1, 2014). "Putting Prisons on the LGBT Agenda". The Huffington Post. The Huffington Post. Retrieved February 14, 2015.
- ^ a b Bassichis, Daniel (2007). "It's War In Here": A Report on the Treatment of Transgender and Intersex People in New York State Men's Prisons (PDF). Sylvia Rivera Law Project. pp. 1–50. Retrieved February 14, 2015.
- ^ Whitlock, Kay (December 15, 2005). "Corrupting Justice: A Primer for LGBT Communities on Racism, Violence, Human Degradation & the Prison Industrial Complex" (PDF). American Friends Service Committee. American Friends Service Committee. Retrieved February 14, 2015.
- ^ Beck, Allan; Berzofsky, Marcus; Caspar, Rachel; Krebs, Christopher (May 2013). Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates, 2011-12. National Criminal Justice Reference Service.
- ^ a b c Horowitz, Alana. "Mental Illness Soars In Prisons, Jails While Inmates Suffer". http://www.huffingtonpost.com. Huffington Post. Retrieved February 15, 2015.
{{cite web}}
: External link in
(help)|website=
- ^ a b "Mentally Ill Persons in Corrections". http://nicic.gov. National Institute of Corrections. Retrieved February 15, 2015.
{{cite web}}
: External link in
(help)|website=
- ^ a b Geller, Adam (July 14, 2014). "U.S. Jails Struggle With Role As Makeshift Asylums". The Huffington Post. The Huffington Post. Retrieved February 17, 2015.
- ^ a b Skeem, Jennifer; Manchak, Sarah; Peterson, Jillian (April 2011). "Correctional Policy for Offenders with Mental Illness: Creating a New Paradigm for Recidivism Reduction". Law and Human Behavior. 35 (2): 110–126. doi:10.1007/s10979-010-9223-7. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
- ^ a b c James, Doris; Glaze, Lauren (December 14, 2006). Mental Health Problems of Prison and Jail Inmates (PDF). U.S. Department of Justice: Office of Justice Programs: Bureau of Justice Statistics. pp. 1–12. Retrieved February 16, 2015.
- ^ a b c Mental Illness, Human Rights, and US Prisons: Human Rights Watch Statement for the Record Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law (PDF). Human Rights Watch. September 22, 2009. pp. 1–14. Retrieved February 20, 2015. See p. 10.
- ^ Marisa Taylor (May 12, 2015). Report: Mentally ill inmates are routinely abused by corrections officers. Al Jazeera America. Retrieved May 17, 2015.
- ^ a b c d Peterson, Jillian; Skeem, Jennifer; Kennealy, Patrick; Bray, Beth; Zvonkovic, Andrea (2014). "How Often and How Consistently do Symptoms Directly Precede Criminal Behavior Among Offenders With Mental Illness?" (PDF). Law and Human Behavior. 38 (5): 439–449. doi:10.1037/lhb0000075. Retrieved February 20, 2015.
- ^ Torrey, E. Fuller; Kennard, Aaron; Eslinger, Don; Lamb, Richard; Pavle, James (May 2010). More Mentally Ill Persons Are in Jails and Prisons Than Hospitals: A Survey of the States (PDF). Arlington, Virginia: Treatment Advocacy Center. pp. 1–22. Retrieved February 21, 2015.
- ^ "Transfer Of State Prisoners." United States Department of Justice. Retrieved on April 14, 2016.
- ^ "How The Program Works." United States Department of Justice. Retrieved on April 14, 2016.
- ^ a b c "What Do Security Levels Means". Injustice Security. Retrieved August 28, 2016.
- ^ DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS TO BAN INMATES FROM SOLICITING PEN PALS ON WEBSITES – Missouri Department of Corrections, press release May 13, 2007. "During our review, we have identified numerous offenders who, through misleading web postings and photos, have solicited thousands of dollars from individuals and have devised other creative and purposeful intents to defraud the public"
- ^ "Arizona Inmates Back on the Net". Wired News. December 17, 2002. Retrieved January 26, 2008.
- ^ Neal Moore (March 28, 2011). "Employment Upon Release". CNN. Retrieved March 28, 2011.
- ^ "Prisoners' Rights – Legal Correspondence". FindLaw. Retrieved January 26, 2008.
- ^ "California Prison Reform and Rehabilitation". California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
- ^ Prison and Detention Conditions. Human Rights Watch, retrieved May 22, 2015.
- ^ "Inhumane Prison Conditions Still Threaten Life, Health of Alabama Inmates Living with HIV/AIDS, According to Court Filings". Human Rights Watch. February 27, 2005. Retrieved June 13, 2006.
- ^ Cindy Struckman-Johnson & David Struckman-Johnson (December 2000). "Sexual Coercion Rates in Seven Midwestern Prisons for Men" (PDF). The Prison Journal. 80 (4): 379–390. doi:10.1177/0032885500080004004.
- ^ a b Hylton, Wil S. (July 2003). "Sick on the Inside". Harper's Magazine. Retrieved February 29, 2012.
- ^ Liliana Segura (October 1, 2013).With 2.3 Million People Incarcerated in the US, Prisons Are Big Business. The Nation. Retrieved October 9, 2013.
- ^ Abigail Leonard & Adam May (May 28, 2014). Whistleblower: Arizona inmates are dying from inadequate health care. Al Jazeera America. Retrieved July 22, 2014.
- ^ David M. Reutter, Gary Hunter & Brandon Sample. Appalling Prison and Jail Food Leaves Prisoners Hungry for Justice. Prison Legal News. Retrieved January 4, 2013.
- ^ Paul Egan (May 7, 2013). Michigan's new prison food contractor accused of skimping on size and quality of meals to boost profits. Detroit Free Press. Retrieved January 4, 2014.
- ^ "Gang and Security Threat Group Awareness". Florida Department of Corrections. Retrieved June 13, 2006.
- ^ Thompson, Don (April 5, 2008). "Prison Attacks Calling Attention to Overcrowding". Associated Press. Retrieved August 6, 2009.
- ^ Moore, Solomon (August 5, 2009). "California Prisons Must Cut Inmate Population". New York Times. p. A10. Retrieved August 6, 2009.
- ^ Order for population reduction plan, pg. 9, three-judge court convened by the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit hearing Plata v. Schwarzenegger and Coleman v. Schwarzenegger
- ^ Medina, Jennifer (May 24, 2011). "In a California Prison, Bunk Beds Replace Pickup Games". The New York Times.
- ^ "Calif. Faces Tough Choices on Overcrowded Prisons".
- ^ "Justices, 5-4, Tell California to Cut Prisoner Population". The New York Times (May 23, 2011). Adam Liptak. May 23, 2011. Retrieved February 15, 2016.
- ^ "RBGG and Co-Counsel Win Affirmance at Supreme Court of the United States". Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP. 50 Fremont Street, 19th Floor San Francisco, CA 94105. May 23, 2011. Retrieved February 15, 2016.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: location (link) - ^ "How Many Prisoners Are in Solitary Confinement in the United States?".
- ^ UN News. "Solitary confinement should be banned in most cases".
- ^ Dana Larson (December 8, 1999). "Norway Grants Refuge to US Smuggler". Cannabis Culture.
- ^ Cara Tabachnick (December 27, 2013). There's an alarming number of deaths in US jails. The Guardian. Retrieved December 28, 2013.
- ^ Holly Richmond (September 18, 2013). "Everybody wants condom vending machines". Grist Magazine. Grist Magazine, Inc. Retrieved September 19, 2013.
- ^ Alabama Guards Stage Work Strike Months After Prisoner Uprising at Overcrowded Holman Facility. Democracy Now! September 28, 2016.
- ^ Khalek, Rania. How private prisons game the system. Salon.com. December 1, 2011.
- ^ a b c Harcourt, Bernard (2012). The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674066162 pp. 235 & 236
- ^ Selman, Donna and Paul Leighton (2010). Punishment for Sale: Private Prisons, Big Business, and the Incarceration Binge. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 1442201738 p. xi
- ^ Archambeault, William G.; Donald R. Deis Jr. (1997–1998). "Cost Effectiveness Comparisons of Private Versus Public Prisons in Louisiana: A Comprehensive Analysis of Allen, Avoyelles, and Winn Correction Centers". Journal of the Oklahoma Criminal Justice Research Consortium. 4.
- ^ Marie Gottschalk. Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics. Princeton University Press, 2014. p. 70
- ^ a b Shapiro, David. "Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration" (PDF). American Civil Liberties Union. Retrieved March 31, 2013.
- ^ a b Chang, Cindy (May 29, 2012). "Louisiana is the world's prison capital". The Times-Picayune. Retrieved April 4, 2013.
{{cite web}}
: Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|publisher=
(help) - ^ a b Margaret Newkirk & William Selway (July 12, 2013). "Gangs Ruled Prison as For-Profit Model Put Blood on Floor." Bloomberg. Retrieved July 16, 2013.
- ^ Jerry Mitchell (September 25, 2014). East Mississippi prison called 'barbaric'. The Clarion-Ledger. Retrieved December 1, 2014. See also: A Tour of East Mississippi Correctional Facility. ACLU.
- ^ Timothy Williams (November 6, 2014). Christopher Epps, Former Chief of Prisons in Mississippi, Is Arraigned. The New York Times. Received December 2, 2014.
- ^ Stroud, Matt (February 24, 2014). The Private Prison Racket. Politico. Retrieved February 25, 2014.
- ^ Kirkham, Chris (September 27, 2012). Private Prisons: Immigration Convictions In Record Numbers Fueling Corporate Profits. The Huffington Post. Retrieved February 25, 2014.
- ^ Renee Lewis (February 23, 2015). Inmates riot at for-profit Texas immigrant detention facility. Al Jazeera America. Retrieved February 24, 2015.
- ^ a b c d John L. Campbell (2010). "Neoliberalism's penal and debtor states". Theoretical Criminology. 14 (1): 59–73. doi:10.1177/1362480609352783.
{{cite journal}}
:|author=
has generic name (help); External link in
(help)|author=
- ^ Matt Taibbi (2014). The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap. Spiegel & Grau. ISBN 081299342X pp. 214-216.
- ^ "Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law". NPR. October 28, 2010. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
- ^ Sullivan, Laura (2010). Shaping State Laws With Little Scrutiny. National Public Radio.
- ^ Elk, Mike and Sloan, Bob (2011). The Hidden History of ALEC and Prison Labor. The Nation.
- ^ Prison Privatization and the Use of Incarceration. The Sentencing Project, September 2004.
- ^ a b Whitehead, John (April 10, 2012). "Jailing Americans for Profit: The Rise of the Prison Industrial Complex". The Rutherford Institute. Retrieved April 2, 2013.
- ^ Pat Beall (November 22, 2013). Big business, legislators pushed for stiff sentences. The Palm Beach Post. Retrieved November 10, 2014.
- ^ Greenblatt, Alan (October 2003). "What Makes Alec Smart?". Governing.
{{cite news}}
: Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|work=
(help) - ^ Beau Hodai, "Corporate Con Game. How the private prison industry helped shape Arizona's anti-immigrant law", In These Times, June 20, 2010, http://inthesetimes.com/article/6084/corporate_con_game, retrieved July 25, 2015.
- ^ "Toughest Beat - Oxford Scholarship".
- ^ California Prison Guards Union Pushes For Prison Expansion. The Huffington Post. September 9, 2013.
- ^ Chris Kirkham (September 19, 2013). Prison Quotas Push Lawmakers To Fill Beds, Derail Reform. The Huffington Post. Retrieved September 20, 2013.
- ^ Eric Schlosser (December 1998). The Prison-Industrial Complex. The Atlantic. Retrieved December 31, 2013.
- ^ Ray Downs (May 17, 2013). Who's Getting Rich Off the Prison-Industrial Complex? Vice. Retrieved December 31, 2013.
- ^ Selman, Donna and Paul Leighton (2010). Punishment for Sale: Private Prisons, Big Business, and the Incarceration Binge. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 1442201738 p. 78
- ^ Prison Payback on YouTube. Russia Today on YouTube
- ^ Marie Gottschalk (March 5, 2015). It's Not Just the Drug War. Jacobin. Retrieved March 5, 2015.
- ^ Detention Watch Network, "The Influence of the Private Prison Industry in Immigration Detention", 2012, http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/privateprisons, retrieved July 25, 2015.
- ^ DiversityInc, "The Prison Industrial Complex: Biased, Predatory and Growing", October 8, 2010, http://www.diversityinc.com/diversity-management/the-prison-industrial-complex-biased-predatory-and-growing/, retrieved July 25, 2015.
- ^ David Harris-Gershon, "America's Corrupt Justice System: Federal Private Prison Populations Grew by 784% in 10 Year Span", Alternet, crossposted on Tikkun Daily, May 23, 2013, http://www.alternet.org/speakeasy/tikkundaily/americas-corrupt-justice-system-federal-private-prison-populations-grew-784-10, retrieved July 25, 2015.
- ^ Camp, Camille; Camp, George (2000). "Corrections Yearbook 2000: Private Prisons". National Criminal Justice Reference Service. Retrieved June 14, 2015.
- ^ Justice Is Not For Sale Act. Sanders.senate.gov
- ^ Bernie Sanders declares war on the prison-industrial complex with major new bill. Salon. September 17, 2015.
- ^ Private federal prisons more dangerous, damning DoJ investigation reveals. The Guardian. August 12, 2016.
- ^ Justice Department Will Stop the Use of Private Prisons. Time. August 18, 2016.
- ^ Nathan James. Federal Prison Industries. CRS Report for Congress. Updated July 13, 2007.
- ^ McCollum, William (1996). Federal Prison Industries, Inc: Hearing Before the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives. DIANE Publishing. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-7567-0060-7.
- ^ Nate C. Hindman (August 15, 2012). Unicor Under Fire For Dominating Small Competitors With Cheap Prison Labor. The Huffington Post. Retrieved May 9, 2014.
- ^ Beth Schwartzapfel (February 12, 2009). Your Valentine, Made in Prison. The Nation. Retrieved April 15, 2015.
- ^ Simon McCormack (December 10, 2012). Prison Labor Booms As Unemployment Remains High; Companies Reap Benefits. The Huffington Post. Retrieved April 15, 2015.
- ^ Chris Hedges (April 5, 2015). Boycott, Divest and Sanction Corporations That Feed on Prisons. Truthdig. Retrieved April 4, 2015.
- ^ Marie Gottschalk. Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics. Princeton University Press, 2014. p. 61
- ^ Justin Jouvenal (January 28, 2012). "Town struggles to survive close of prison". Washington Post.
- ^ a b Inmates strike in prisons nationwide over 'slave labor' working conditions. The Guardian September 9, 2016.
- ^ The Largest Prison Strike in U.S. History Enters Its Second Week. The Intercept September 16, 2016.
- ^ Work Stoppage Prison Strike Continues in 11 US States. The Real News. September 20, 2016.
- ^ a b Direct expenditures by justice function, 1982–2007 (billions of dollars). Inflation adjusted to 2007 dollars. U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). Retrieved January 1, 2012 by the Internet Archive. See BJS timeline graph based on the data.
- ^ a b Justice Expenditures and Employment, FY 1982–2007 - Statistical Tables (NCJ 236218). Published December 2011. U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). By Tracey Kyckelhahn, Ph.D., BJS statistician. See table 2 of the PDF. "Total justice expenditures, by justice function, FY 1982–2007 (real dollars)". A total of around $74 billion for corrections in 2007.
- ^ As Arrest Records Rise, Americans Find Consequences Can Last a Lifetime. August 18, 2014. Wall Street Journal.
- ^ Annual Determination of Average Cost of Incarceration. A notice by the Prisons Bureau on March 9, 2015 in the Federal Register.
- ^ The Price of Prisons: What Incarceration Costs Taxpayers. February 29, 2012, the Vera Institute of Justice. By Christian Henrichson and Ruth Delaney. "Total taxpayer cost per inmate. Among the 40 states surveyed, representing more than 1.2 million inmates (of 1.4 million total people incarcerated in all 50 state prison systems), the total per-inmate cost averaged $31,286 and ranged from $14,603 in Kentucky to $60,076 in New York (see Figure 4)."
- ^ California Criminal Justice FAQ: How much does it cost to incarcerate an inmate? California Legislative Analyst's Office.
- ^ Inmates Who Can't Make Bail Face Stark Options. By Laura Sullivan. January 22, 2010. National Public Radio.
- ^ a b Bail Burden Keeps U.S. Jails Stuffed With Inmates. By Laura Sullivan. January 21, 2010. National Public Radio.
- ^ Jail Inmates at Midyear 2009 – Statistical Tables. By Minton D. Todd. June 3, 2010. NCJ 230122. U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. See Table 7 of the PDF file for percent unconvicted.
- ^ a b Bondsman Lobby Targets Pretrial Release Programs. By Laura Sullivan. January 22, 2010. National Public Radio.
- ^ Jails Stuffed To Capacity In Many U.S. Counties. January 20, 2010. National Public Radio. Chart using 2008 jail statistics showing "50 U.S. counties with the largest numbers of inmates."
- ^ "Fiscal Year 2009 State Expenditure Report". National Association of State Budget Officers. Retrieved October 10, 2011.
- ^ The Full Cost Of Incarceration In The U.S. Is Over $1 Trillion, Study Finds. The Huffington Post. September 13, 2016.
- ^ "Violent crime rate per 1,000 persons age 12 and up".
- ^ John J. Gibbons and Nicholas de B. Katzenbach (June 2006). "Confronting Confinement". Vera Institute of Justice.
- ^ a b c Lyons, John. War on the Family: Mothers in Prison and the Children They Leave Behind (DVD). Peace Productions.
- ^ Alexander, Elizabeth (Fall 1998). "A Troubling Response To Overcrowded Prisons". Civil Rights Journal.
- ^ Aizenman, N.C. (February 29, 2008). "The high cost of incarceration". Denver Post.
- ^ Reihan Salam (September 29, 2010). "Mike Konczal on the Incarceration Problem". National Review Online. Retrieved November 29, 2010.
- ^ "US notches world's highest incarceration rate". Christian Science Monitor. August 18, 2003.
- ^ Golden, Renny (2005). War on the Family: Mothers in Prison and the Families They Leave Behind. New York: Taylor and Friends. p. 2.
- ^ Murray, Joseph; Farrington, David P. (2005). "Parental imprisonment: effects on boys' antisocial behaviour and delinquency through the life‐course". Journal of Child Psychology and psychiatry. 46 (12): 1269–1278. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2005.01433.x.
- ^ Gabel, Katherine, and Denise Johnston. Children of incarcerated parents. Lexington Books, 1995.
- ^ Michelle Alexander. "How mass incarceration turns people of color into permanent second-class citizens". The American Prospect.
- ^ Michael O'Hear (November 8, 2014). "The "New Jim Crow" Reconsidered". Retrieved November 8, 2014.
{{cite web}}
: Cite has empty unknown parameters:|month=
and|coauthors=
(help) - ^ SpearIt (January 6, 2016). "Keeping It REAL: Why Congress Must Act to Restore Pell Grant Funding for Prisoners". Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - ^ Adam Gopnik. The Caging of America. The New Yorker, 2012.
- ^ SpearIt (January 1, 2014). "Economic Interest Convergence in Downsizing Imprisonment". Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - ^ "The effect of prison on criminal behavior". Public Safety Canada. November 1999. Retrieved August 28, 2009.
- ^
- ^ a b Fellner, Jamie (November 30, 2006). "US Addiction to Incarceration Puts 2.3 Million in Prison". Human Rights Watch. Retrieved June 2, 2007.
- ^ Abramsky, Sasha (January 22, 2002). Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation. Thomas Dunne Books. ISBN 0-312-26811-4.
- ^ "America's One-Million Nonviolent Prisoners" (PDF). Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. March 1999.
- ^ Slevin, Peter (June 8, 2006). "U.S. Prison Study Faults System and the Public". The Washington Post.
- ^ READ: Matt Taibbi on "The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap". Democracy Now! April 14, 2014. Retrieved April 18, 2014.
- ^ Meranze, Michael (February 4, 2015). Pathology of the Carceral State. Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved February 16, 2015.
- ^ Hadar Aviram (September 7, 2014). Are Private Prisons to Blame for Mass Incarceration and its Evils? Prison Conditions, Neoliberalism, and Public Choice. University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Retrieved December 27, 2014.
- ^ Loïc Wacquant. Prisons of Poverty. University of Minnesota Press (2009). ISBN 0816639019.
- ^ David Jaffee (December 29, 2014). Guest column: Real reason behind prison explosion. The Florida Times-Union. Retrieved January 8, 2015.
- ^ Marie Gottschalk. Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics. Princeton University Press, 2014. p. 10
- ^ Loïc Wacquant. Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Duke University Press, 2009. ISBN 082234422X
- ^ Frances Goldin, Debby Smith, Michael Smith (2014). Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA. Harper Perennial. ISBN 0062305573 pp. 59-60.
- ^ Bernard Harcourt (April 30, 2012). Laissez-faire with strip-searches: America's two-faced liberalism. The Guardian. Retrieved December 27, 2014.
- ^ Stephen Haymes, Maria Vidal de Haymes and Reuben Miller (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Poverty in the United States, (London: Routledge, 2015), ISBN 0415673445, p. 346.
- ^ Chris Hedges. The Shame of America's Gulag. Truthdig. March 17, 2013.
- ^ Schwarz, Joel (August 3, 2008). "Bulging Prison System Called Massive Intervention in American Family Life" (Press release). University of Washington.
- ^ Fields, Gary (September 24, 2012). "Federal Guilty Pleas Soar As Bargains Trump Trials". Wall Street Journal. New York City. pp. A1.
- ^ "Federal judge blocks Alabama policy of segregating HIV inmates". Washington Post. December 21, 2012. Retrieved December 21, 2012.
- ^ a b c d Carter, Terry (August 12, 2013). "Sweeping reversal of the War on Drugs announced by Atty General Holder". ABA's 560-member policy making House of Delegates. American Bar Association. p. 1. Retrieved August 16, 2013.
- ^ a b c d "Smart on Crime: Reforming The Criminal Justice System" (PDF). Remarks to American Bar Association's Annual Convention in San Francisco, CA. US Department of Justice. August 12, 2013. p. 7. Retrieved August 16, 2013.
- ^ "Prison Strip Search is Sexually Abusive". ACLU. Retrieved December 24, 2013.
- ^ Johnson, Kevin (March 31, 2014). "Toughness on Crime gradually gives way to fairness". USA Today. pp. 1B, 2B. Retrieved March 31, 2014.
Additional reading
Books
- Alexander, Michelle (2012). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press. ISBN 1595586431
- Davis, Angela (2003). Are Prisons Obsolete?. Seven Stories Press. ISBN 9781583225813
- Gottschalk, Marie (2014). Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics. Princeton University Press. Book Hardcover ISBN 9780691164052, eBook ISBN 9781400852147.
- Harcourt, Bernard (2012). The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674066162
- Selman, Donna and Paul Leighton (2010). Punishment for Sale: Private Prisons, Big Business, and the Incarceration Binge. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 1442201738
- Taibbi, Matt (2014). The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap. Spiegel & Grau. ISBN 081299342X
- Wacquant, Loïc (2009). Prisons of Poverty. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0816639019
- ——— (2009). Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Duke University Press. ISBN 082234422X
- Western, Bruce (2007). Punishment and Inequality in America. Russell Sage Foundation. ISBN 087154895X
Articles and interviews
- The Prison State of America (2014-12-28), Chris Hedges, Truthdig
- How Prisons Rip Off and Exploit the Incarcerated, Part I (2015-01-04) and Part II (2015-01-07), Marshall "Eddie" Conway and Chris Hedges, The Real News
- Do Prisons and Mass Incarceration Keep Us Safe? Part I (2015-01-11) and Part II (2015-01-13), Marshall "Eddie" Conway and Maya Schenwar, author of Locked Down and Locked Out. The Real News. See also Tomgram: Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name (2015-01-18), TomDispatch
- "Carceral Conglomerate" Makes Millions From Incarcerated, Their Friends and Families (February 2015), James Kilgore and Brian Dolinar, Truthout
- Prison Industries: "Don't Let Society Improve or We Lose Business" (April 2012), Dina Rasor, Truthout
- Immigrants mistreated in 'inhumane' private prisons, finds report. Al Jazeera America. June 10, 2014.
- Watch John Oliver Explain the Insanity of Our Prison System With Puppets. Mother Jones. July 21, 2014.
- Locked Up for Being Poor: How private debt collectors contribute to a cycle of jail, unemployment, and poverty. The Atlantic. February 25, 2015.
- Why does the US imprison so many people? Al Jazeera America. May 14, 2015.
- Why Isn't More Happening to Reduce America's Bloated Prison Population? Rolling Stone. June 24, 2015.
- Cruel and All-Too-Usual. The Huffington Post. July 1, 2015.
- Big business built the prison state. Why should we trust them to tear it down? The Guardian. July 17, 2015.
- SpearIt, Economic Interest Convergence in Downsizing Imprisonment (2014). University of Pittsburgh Law Review, Vol. 25, 2014. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2608698
- "My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard": Shane Bauer Goes Undercover to Expose Conditions. Democracy Now! June 27, 2016.