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KY: Leads the nation in prisoner growth rate

By Real Cost of Prisons Project (The Sentencing Project)

Sunday, March 2, 2008 Louisville Courier Journal Nation of prisons The study of America's prison population by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States should shock citizens and provoke fresh thinking at every level of government. The statistics are breath-taking. For the first time in history, more than 1 percent of the nation's adults are in prison or jail. For some demographic groups, the figures are far higher. Among black men between the ages of 20 and 34, to pick the most distressing example, one in nine is behind bars. The nation leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it imprisons. And Kentucky leads the country with a prisoner growth rate of 12 percent. The roots of the problem are deep. They lie not in dramatic increases in actual crime but in 30 years of policy decisions to get tough through longer and often mandatory sentences...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog on March 02, 2008 (boomark / email).