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: The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Albion, New York Portrait of a prison town.

By Real Cost of Prisons Project (The Sentencing Project)

Albion, New York Portrait of a prison town. By Andrew Marantz / Albion, New York Tuesday, February 3, 2009 America?s prison system is the biggest in history. Of the roughly nine million prisoners in the world, over two million are in America (World Prison Population List). The United States incarcerates more of its own people (an estimate of 2,357,284 according to the incarceration clock on January 27, 2009, at 12:56 p.m.) per capita than any other nation. This rate is 6.2 times greater than Canada?s, 7.8 times greater than France?s, and 12.3 times greater than Japan?s. Why? The simple answer would be because of our crime rate, only this is not really true. America?s incarceration rates and crime rates do not correlate. The imprisonment rate does not reflect the general population growth either; population growth is a molehill compared to the ever-growing mountain of incarcerated Americans (Punishment and Inequality in America, 2006)...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog on February 04, 2009 (boomark / email).