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1 in 100 Now Behind Bars; Numbers for Blacks and Latinos Bleak
By Daryl Hannah
February 29, 2008
Three decades of constant prison-population growth has pushed the United States over a new, unwelcome threshold. For the first time, more than one in every 100 Americans is incarcerated; however, for Blacks and Latinos, that number is significantly higher.
The study, conducted by the Pew Center on the States, found that among Latino men, one in every 36 is incarcerated. One in every 15 Black men is incarcerated. When the study looked at Black men ages 20--34, the incarceration rate jumped 40 percent to one in every nine, compared to one in every 106 white men.
The report also found "especially startling" incarceration rates among Black and white women, noting one in every 355 white women ages 35--39 is incarcerated, compared with one in every 100 Black women.
Despite a nationwide increase in the number of inmates, one dramatic decrease has been in the number of violent crimes, which fell by 25 percent to 464 per 100,000 people in 2007, up from 612.5 in 1987, according to the FBI.
"Our violent offenders, we lock them up for a very long time--rapists, murderers, child molesters," Sen. John Whitmire, D--Houston, and the chairman of the Senate's Criminal Justice Committee, told The New York Times.
While these numbers are shocking, they are not necessarily surprising. A 2006 Census Bureau survey that studied social, racial and economic characteristics of people living in adult correctional facilities found that there are more Blacks in prison than in classrooms.
"It's one of the great social and economic tragedies of our time," Marc Morial, president and CEO of the Urban League, told MSNBC. "It points to the signature failure in our education system and how we've been raising our children. We do, in the African-American community, need to instill a stronger value on education."
However, budgeting between education and an effective justice system has become a difficult balancing act.
These prison rates, according to the study, are "blowing a hole in state budgets." Last year alone, states spent nearly 7 percent of their budgets on corrections, spending more than $49 billion, up from $11 billion 20 years before, according to the study. While the cost per prisoner can vary dramatically--from $44,860 in states like Rhode Island to $13,000 in Louisiana--the average cost per prisoner was $23,876, the most recent year for which data was available.
"Getting tough on crime has gotten tough on taxpayers," said Adam Gelb, the director of the public-safety performance project at the Pew Center, to the Times. "They don't want to spend $23,000 on a prison cell for a minor violation any more than they want a bridge to nowhere."
While there are no immediate solutions on the table to help curb the rising number of Blacks and Latinos in prison, officials hope initiatives aimed at creating programs for substance-abuse offenders, including job training and housing, will help.
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