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1 in 100

By Jonathan Simor

It was bound to happen soon. Newspapers and media outlets today carried stories on a just published survey that places the nation's jail and prison population at an all time high proportion of the overall population, the magic number, 100 to 1. The report by the PEW Center on the States (read it here) shows that America's thirty year old prison binge has continued. In the early 1970s, fewer than 1 out of every 1,000 adult Americans were behind bars. Today its 1 in 100.Actually, 1 out of every 100 is an overall figure that masks severe racial, age, and gender disparities that are well developed in the PEW report. Interestingly white men, and black women, both hover around that precise number, but white men were far less likely to be incarcerated then black men (1 in 15) and black women far more likely than white women (1 in 100 compared to 1 in 355)...continue to full post

Full post as published by Governing Through Crime on February 28, 2008 (boomark / email).