What the heck is going on here?!? Why is this happening? Is it because there are too many non-violent offenders in prison? Are more people turning to crime out of desperation/no hope? Are there just a ton of "evil" people in this country?
I tend to think that 1.) too many people are being sent for the wrong reasons and 2.) more people feel no hope at living a decent life, so they turn to crime.
What's your take?

from the NY Times:
U.S. 'Correctional Population' Hits New High
By FOX BUTTERFIELD

Published: July 26, 2004

The number of Americans under the control of the criminal justice system grew by 130,700 last year to reach a new high of nearly 6.9 million, according to a Justice Department report released today.

The total includes people in jail and prison as well as those on probation and parole. This is about 3.2 percent of the adult population in the United States, the report said.

The growth in what the report termed the "correctional population" comes at a time when the crime rate nationwide has been relatively stable for several years. It also comes when many states, faced with budget deficits, have passed new, less strict sentencing laws in an attempt to reduce the number of inmates.

The report does not address why the number of men and women in jail and prison and on probation and parole has continued to increase. But experts say the most likely reason is the cumulative effect of the tougher sentencing laws passed in the 1990's, which led to more people's being sent to prison and being required to serve longer terms.

The report found that there were 691,301 people in local and county jails and 1,387,269 in state and federal prisons last year, for a total of 2,078,570. That was an increase of 3.9 percent in the jail population and 2.3 percent in the prison population.

At the same time, the report said, there were 4,073,987 Americans on probation at the end of last year, an increase of 1.2 percent from the end of 2002, and 774,588 on parole, up 3.1 percent.

In general, people on probation have been placed there after being convicted of a crime instead of being sent to jail or prison. People on parole have usually already served prison time and are kept on parole for further supervision.

About 41 percent of adults on parole last year were black; 40 percent were white.

The number of women on parole has steadily increased in recent years, the report found. The percentage of parolees who were women was 13 percent at the end of 2003, up from 10 percent at the end of 1995. This increase reflects a slow but steady growth in the number of women being arrested for and convicted of serious crimes.

Of those people discharged from parole in 2003, 38 percent were returned to prison, either because of a technical violation like failing a drug urine test or because they were charged with committing a new crime. Another 9 percent absconded and could not be located by law enforcement, the report said.

The 3.1 percent increase in the number of people on parole, the biggest in at least a decade, troubles many police and prosecutors, because they believe that newly released inmates are likely to return to a life of crime and are a major source of violence in some cities, including Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Texas led the nation with 534,260 people on probation or parole, followed by California, with 485,039.

I agree with you that many turn to crime because there is no hope. A huge majority of prison population is made of minorities who come from the inner city. My father was a corrections officer at a maximum security and saw that many would be educated in prison to make for a better life afterwards. But for the ones serving life, they probabaly deserve it (or death, I believe in an eye for an eye).

__________________
"Republicans believe that everyday
is the 4th of July, while the Democrats wish everyday was April 15th" - Ronald Reagan

If the lawmakers took a libertarian stance and legalized drugs, a huge chunk of the prisoners would not be prisoners, what 50% or so? I don't know the exact figure is but it is huge.

If the government controls drugs, and taxes the hell out of it, it will still be cheaper than drug dealers price; drug crimes will drop, allowing police to focus on other crimes like murder, rape, theft, etc.

Bingo Ozek

I think this is yet another reason as to why the war on drugs is a failure.

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Proudly a "South Park Republican"

the drug was is a bust, end it, legalize what can be reasonably legalized and let's stop funding the bed and breakfast for these clowns...

If 29% of our prison population is illegal aliens (I've heard numbers as high as 40% in some areas), then by merely protecting our borders the number of inmates would go down.

And consider also violent crimes continue to drop nationwide, so the increase in population isn't necessarily a bad thing.

P.S. Legalizing drugs would be a mistake socially and economically. You can't tax what people could make/grow in their back yard...

states the number of "Americans" in prison. I don't think it includes illegal immigrants.

I don't think 29% of the population are immigrants, anyhow. I've never heard a figure like that. maybe 1-2%, if that. I know that some county jails in AZ and CA have figures that high, but I don't know about widespread problems or on a federal level.

http://www.fairus.org/news/NewsPrint.cfm?ID=1252&c=17

http://www.fairus.org/Research/Resea...m?ID=1301&c=54

I suggest that you stop using ridiculously long sentences. To be sentenced to more then, say ten years should almost always require a violent crime. More then twenty should be almost unheard of in non murder cases. And life sentences should require murder and a violent behavior that suggest that they may do something bad again if released. This to allow for shorter sentences when the victim has provoked the killing. A typical example of this is when a woman kills her husband after several years of abuse. These cases are not technically self defense but the difference are so blurred that the court should allow for a shorter sentence and in the reality, this often happens. The same is often true in euthanasia cases.

Also be lenient to when "ordinary" people commit crimes. They are less likely to continue with criminal behavior after being released after prison so there is little reason to keep them there longer then necessary. It is the repeat offenders that are the problem people, ordinary people should not be allowed to clog up the system. I therefore suggest a possibility for a massive reduction of the time sentenced for the first prison sentence. This should however be a possibility, some deserve longer sentences even the first time.

There are many alternatives to prison that can be used, here are some examples, some are already in use and some are right out horrible. I don't support all these methods so don't see them as suggestions but examples.

Regular, mandatory visits to the local police.

House arrest. A small electronic tracking that the offender get strapped on a leg and registered if it is worn near another device installed in their home or maybe even at work. These devices allow for the convict to live in their own home, go to work, shop for food, pick up the kids at school and so on. The home then acts as a prison when not doing a few allowed activities outside the home. It is easy to remove these things but doing so is an offense in itself and sends the offender to a normal prison. The same happens if they fail to return home within the alloted time to do so based on how much time they reasonable could need. Delays needs to be explained or they are sent to prison instead.

Community service as a possibility for the really mild crimes.

A warning, combined with probation.

Fines.

Forbidden to posses an selected item or range of items. Usually something that was used as a tool in whatever crime they where convicted of.

Forbidden to work in some profession that allowed them to commit the crime in question or something similar.

Forced to posses an selected item like an drunk driver that must at all times carry a photograph of their victim in their wallet in a easy to see way to make sure that they never forget what they did.

Flogging, ancient and still used in some places.

Public humiliation. The offender get chained up in a public place. Also an ancient method of punishment.

Forced service. The offender are signed up with the military and sent into combat under extremely dangerous conditions. They are released if they survive, something that is not expected. Those that has seen the movie "The dirty dozen" understand what I talk about here. For those that has not I provide a link here: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0061578/

__________________
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he doesn't become a monster.
Friedrich Nietzsche

First of all, the links you gave are to an "anti-immigration" site. Secondly, I can't seem to reconcile these seemingly contradictory statements:

By the end of 1999, these same prisons housed over 68,000 criminal aliens.1 Today, criminal aliens account for over 29 percent of prisoners in Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities and a higher share of all federal prison inmates.2

!.) 68,000 is less than 1% of 6.9 million!! (Are you telling me this figure jumped into the millions since 1999? There's no way...
2.) I just don't get where the 29% in statement 2 comes from. I checked the footnotes, which says this info is from the bureau of prisons, but I'd like to see the raw statement from them, not just the citation. Maybe it was a 29% increase or something.

Please explain how 68,000 is anywhere close to 29% of 6.9 million.