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October 07, 2007
Senator Jim Webb On Mass Incarceration
Jim Webb held hearings on The Mass Incarceration of American citizens. America imprisons a larger percentage of its citizens than any other country in the world. Lets look at the figures. These are from 2005. America 737 per 100,000. Russia per 611 per 100,000. Cuba 487 per 100,000. China 118 per 100,000. Canada 107 per 100,000. We are worse than Russia. Far worse than Cuba. By comparison with Canada we are almost 7 times worse. Didn't read about the hearing in your newspaper? I'm not surprised. Check out this Google search on news of the hearings. Seven hits. Seven lousy hits. Maybe it will get better when the Sunday papers come out. Or not. Let us hear a bit about what Jim has to say: Over the course of the period from the mid-1970s until today, the United States has embarked on one of the largest public policy experiments in our history, yet this experiment remains shockingly absent from public debate: the United States now imprisons a higher percentage of its citizens than any other country in the world.You can read more on his remarks at the link. Let us look at what a politically connected ex-prisoner has to say. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., is asking Congress to examine high incarceration rates in the United States, and he got a boost from a former California Republican leader yesterday.OK so who are we locking up? The Christian Science Monitor reports: More than 5.6 million Americans are in prison or have served time there, according to a new report by the Justice Department released Sunday. That's 1 in 37 adults living in the United States, the highest incarceration level in the world.Ron Paul talked about this in the recent Presidential debates. What else do we know about who gets locked up? Here is a study of 538 people diagnosed with various mental illnesses. What did the study find? Forty-seven respondents (9%) were incarcerated over the follow-up period. Among them, 20 were incarcerated multiple times. The prevalence, incidence, reasons for incarceration, and time served did not vary significantly by diagnosis. The most significant predictors of jail stay and time to incarceration during the follow-up were being male or black and having been incarcerated before admission. Predictive effects of other risk factors (for example, symptom severity or substance abuse) were smaller or statistically insignificant.How do the mentally ill get treated in prison? You don't have to guess. One in six U.S. prisoners is mentally ill. Many of them suffer from serious illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression. There are three times as many men and women with mental illness in U.S. prisons as in mental health hospitals.Three strikes and you are gone. Some times for life. What a wonderful country. How do we treat mentally ill ex-prisoners? Do we make their re-entry into society easy? Glad you asked. Pressed by rising costs, America's states are scrambling for ways to keep millions of people who are released from jails and prisons each year from coming back. An obvious first step would be to abolish senselessly punitive laws that make it difficult for felons to reconstruct their lives, like those in all 50 states that bar former convicts from occupations that have nothing at all to do with their crimes. Another prudent step would be to create high- quality programs that provide newly released people with counseling and job placement. Perhaps most crucially, those who qualify need assistance in getting back their federal disability and Medicaid benefits; inmates typically lose such benefits when they find themselves locked up for 30 days or more.Cute. Mental illness lands you in prison and then you get no help when you get out. This must be the compassionate conservatism I have heard so much about. How is drug prohibition affecting incarceration rates? Regarding State prison population growth from 1990 through 2000, the US Dept. of Justice reports, "Overall, the increasing number of drug offenses accounted for 27% of the total growth among black inmates, 7% of the total growth among Hispanic inmates, and 15% of the growth among white inmates.Let us look at the population these drug offenders are drawn from: According to the federal Household Survey, "most current illicit drug users are white. There were an estimated 9.9 million whites (72 percent of all users), 2.0 million blacks (15 percent), and 1.4 million Hispanics (10 percent) who were current illicit drug users in 1998." And yet, blacks constitute 36.8% of those arrested for drug violations, over 42% of those in federal prisons for drug violations. African-Americans comprise almost 58% of those in state prisons for drug felonies; Hispanics account for 20.7%.So is the increase in prison population caused by increased crime rates? Growth in the prison population is due to changing policy, not increased crime. Many criminal justice experts have found that the increase in the incarceration rate is the product of changes in penal policy and practice, not changes in crime rates. Changes in sentencing, both in terms of time served and the range of offenses meriting incarceration, underlie the growth in the prison population.As my friend Cliff Thornton Jr. says, "If this was happening to white people there would be revolution in the streets." Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon on 10.07.07 at 12:36 AM |
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The fact is the Va. parole board consist of 2 full time members and 3 part-time with annual pay est. 130,000. They review average 55 inmates daily, in 8 hour day - 1 hr. lunch each inmate recieves 6.3 minutes for their review. 9,000 eligible for release which would be a savings of 27,9000,000 upon their release. I'm not advocating all need this release, because I don't know, only that the parole board is paid very well and it is their duty to be sure when denying that individual they have examined very carefully all circumstances and are willing to consider all when they have proven worthy to be released.