New Report On The Policy of Mass Incarciration In The U.S.

March 5th, 2009

The much respected Pew research firm has issued a report condemning the U.S. public policy that has led to globably unmatched incarciration rates in America over the last 40 years.

Keep in mind what I wrote about the Judges recently convicted of recieving kick backs for sending kids to jail; and how the private for profit prison system has set up a situation that demands criminalization and incarciration in order to generate profits.

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The first piece about the report comes Friends of Justice:

Pew report blasts mass incarceration
by: Alan Bean

The Pew Charitable Trusts believes that facts, figures, sidebar quotations and multi-colored graphs are the keys to policy change. For years now, policy wonks have been crunching the numbers and concluding that America can’t afford its vast gulag.

But is anybody listening?

If you are concerned about America’s addiction to mass incarceration you will want to give the Pew Center on the State’s report your careful attention. There is nothing new here.

You will learn that virtually one-in-one hundred American adults is currently locked up–a fact that has received headline attention in newspapers across the country.

You will learn that the incarceration of women is exploding.

You will learn that one-in-nine black males between the ages of 20 and 34 is currently locked up.

You will learn that some states (Louisiana, for instance) minimize the cost of incarceration by running prisons on the cheap, while other states (like California) are in deep financial trouble because they pay prison personnel inflated salaries.

The Pew report is riddled with common sense, smart-on-crime quotations from the nations governors–an indication that lock-’em-up political rhetoric may be on the decline.

None of this explains why America locks up between five and ten times as many of her citizens as do other Western democracies. Nor is there any serious attempt to grapple with the bizarre over-incarceration of young black males. The one-in-nine statistic suggests that something is terribly wrong–but the precise malady is never diagnosed.

I would like to see a report focusing on the incarceration of poor black people. What percentage of young black males in America’s poorest neighborhoods are currently locked up? One-in-three? One-in-two? What percentage of this group is “in the system”: that is, in prison, jail, on probation or on parole?…

http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/pew-report-blasts-mass-incarceration/

This second commentary comes from Highboltage

Black Prison Gulag and the Police State

The U.S. is King of the global prison hill, the result of a ferocious policy of mass Black incarceration. A new study by researchers at the Pew organization shows the U.S. is number one in numbers of prisoners per capita and sheer size of the national inmate population - many more inmates than are incarcerated in 1.2 billion population China. Seven times more Americans are locked up than during the early 1970s, when the prison explosion began, with non-whites now representing large majorities of prisoners. Mass Black incarceration is a deliberate policy of every state in the nation - a furious backlash against Black gains during the Sixties that continues unabated, disconnected from actual crime rates. Prison “reform” is a worthy goal, but the ongoing crime against African Americans as a people must be tackled head-on, by confronting the true nature of the beast.
http://highboldtage.wordpress.com/2008/03/12/black-prison-gulag-and-the-police-state/

My video commentary about for profit prisions and the prision industral complex:



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About The Blog

  • D. Yobachi Boswell

  • Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.

    I created this site to give new voice to socio-political issues that are in need of thoughtful consideration and redress.

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