I’d never realized this fact. It’s striking, to say the least.
Additionally, 1 out of 9 young black men is locked up.
The Pew Center on the States’ Public Safety Performance Project counted 2,319,258 adults behind bars at the beginning of this year. That was 25,000 more than the previous year.
Ohio was one of the three large states whose prison populations rose last year. The number of prisoners in state institutions topped 50,000 recently for the first time.One in 30 men between 20 and 34 is locked up, the study showed.
1 response so far ↓
davincian // March 2, 2008 at 7:00 pm
This speaks to mandatory minimum sentencing assholery. I’ll take this opportunity to rant a bit. Mandatory sentencing laws have proven to be ineffective. They limit a judge’s ability to consider the actual facts of the case, such as the weight and type of drug, prior convictions, the defendant’s role in the offense, or possible rehabilitation. As a result, drug offenders, the majority of whom (nearly 90 percent) are nonviolent, continue crowding our valuable prison space, while numerous violent criminals are released to provide space. The mandatory sentencing policy is also the least cost-effective means of reducing the selling and usage of drugs. Just ridiculous. Can we please begin to loosen the ropes binding us to our Puritanical heritage?
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