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- With 2.2 million inmates, America has more prisoners behind bars than any other country on earth. We now have 25 percent of the world's incarcerated, with just five percent of the population.
- America’s population behind bars has gone up 1,000 percent in the last three decades. Get-tough-on-crime legislation and minimum sentencing laws are blamed for the explosion of inmates. Of all prisoners, 95 percent will be released. Half of them are currently serving a term of two years or less.
- According to correctional officers, drugs find their way inside even the most secure facilities, but the more secure a facility, the higher the price. Drugs regularly go for up to twenty times their street value behind bars.
- Among prisoners, 35 percent are drug addicts; 80 percent are drug users. One study found that 34 percent of drug users return to state prison within a year.
- Since many correction departments have outlawed tobacco in prisons, the going rate for cigarettes in some prisons has skyrocketed from pocket change to $5 per cigarette. A thimbleful of tobacco goes for as much as $50.
- There are as many as 5,000 prisons or jails in the U.S., employing at least 430,000 people as staff or correctional officers.
- In 2001, the average cost per inmate in state prisons is $22,650 per year or $62.05 a day. The taxpayer price tag is twice as much as just 15 years ago.
- The number of female inmates is increasing almost twice as fast as the men’s incarceration rate, tripling in the last decade. At least 40 percent of jailed women have minor children.
- Inmates in America’s prisons and jails aren’t evenly divided by race; African Americans make up just 13 percent of the U.S. population but 41 percent of the overall prison population. And Hispanics have 2.5 times the rate of imprisonment of non-Hispanic whites.
- More than half of male inmates and roughly two-thirds of female inmates have symptoms of a serious mental illness.
- The largest population of the mentally ill in America isn’t housed in a hospital… It’s in Los Angeles County Jail, followed by New York’s Rikers Island. In all, one-fourth of all state prison beds are occupied by the mentally ill.
- "Solitary confinement" has a new name in prison systems: segregation. Single-celled, 23-hour lock-up units in some of these prisons are designed to limit inmates’ movement and contact with other staff or inmates. Officers can care for inmates electronically — from opening an inmate’s door, to shutting off his water, to turning off his lights.
- More than 80,000 inmates are kept in isolation nationwide. The average stay in some states is now years.
8 comments:
This is such a watershed issue, yet most people seem blissfully unconcerned about the prison industrial complex, and how it is being used to control an unwanted domestic population.
Plantation Negroes consistently vote for other plantation negroes who moan about the crime in our neighborhoods, and then enact more and more laws to allow the overseers more leeway to keep the field hands in line. Then they act all surprised and innocent when then gestapo tactics of the overseers results in Black men and women being legally lynched in the streets by the officers they have empowered to do just that.
I often wonder, if ten laws were good enough for God, and all these law and order establishment types pretend to also be devoutly Christian, why is it that man has set himself up to be a better judge of what the law should allow than God? I personally thing those ten pretty much cover almost every anti-social behavior imaginable today, yet every time I turn around, here's another idiot legislator proposing yet another crime and punishment, usually just in time to make a big media splash before the next election.
"Plantation Negroes consistently vote for other plantation negroes who moan about the crime in our neighborhoods, and then enact more and more laws to allow the overseers more leeway to keep the field hands in line." Ex Men
Brilliant.
How about I chose my battles? When you refuse to take off your shoes what is your usual outcome? I usually just want to get to the bar have a beer a look at whatever game is on TV. I don't see the point in resisting that particular protocal I also don't see myself as a bitch. So what up bruva?
As for the IPC I wrote a satire broaching these issues.It's genius. I won a HBO screenplay contest (flew me to NY hired actors for a presentation) got a buzz in L.A but no real love. How about DV edit it Mills produce it lawgohard do legal and one of you rich knockas fund it. Who got 200000 to invest? It's better than the stock market.
So what do you guys think is behind this whole "gold rebuy" thing? Is that the gov't. Should I invest in Gold should I not? It's gotta be a reason... and some of you Smart egghead mufuggas might be able to school the young lad on your take.
Mosaic law had WAY more than ten laws. And if you believe the ten commandments came from God, then you must believe the rest of the laws did as well.
But, all of those laws were easily boiled down to two by Jesus.
What up Ill?
I like your Hustle.
I don't understand the current content business model. We spend $200G's. Get it shot and cut. Then what?
That's a good question DV. It's guaranteed to be in Sundance.and create a monstrous buzz. Im like a hipper iller Paul Beatty with the cinematic vision of Spike Lee at 29 but more relevant mixed with the cornball geekiness of Judd apatow but funnier Mixed with the brazen irreverence of Robert Downey Sr. It's to be a film that would be shot beautifully, written humorously, played dramatically. My vision is unparalled DV. That's what it is. So we make it 500 sell it for 4 milli plus a deal to do more. There you go. Im young Black handsome and creatively brilliant. If you build it they will come. Plus with D Milli producing it's a wrap.
[quote]America’s population behind bars has gone up 1,000 percent in the last three decades. Get-tough-on-crime legislation and minimum sentencing laws are blamed for the explosion of inmates. Of all prisoners, 95 percent will be released. Half of them are currently serving a term of two years or less./quote]
Brother Vessey - could you articulate why YOU have never been locked up within this "Get Tough On Crime" regime?
Big Man, I promise you I don't take literally any parts of the "good book", I was simply making a point about hypocrisy. And very few of these so called Christians have even a passing familiarity with Mosaic law or any of the other historical precursors of the revised anthology commonly know as "The Bible".
But since you brought Jesus all up into this, the two laws I assume you mean, (a)love the lord and (b)love your neighbor are merely the establishment rantings of a dictator trying desperately to use the church as his primary control mechanism. You should continue to cherish your personal spiritual relationship with your interpretation of a higher power. But you might want to explore how establishment teachings mold your philosophy and world view outside of that personal experience.
@Constructive Feedback, if I might be so bold as to answer that question (for myself if not for DV) it's really not that hard.
First you have to understand the world around you, not just the hood you live in. That's where they get most of the young bro's. Nobody has ever given them the big picture, so it's like they are playing a game of monopoly but they only really understand and use the Baltic and Mediterranean Ave spaces. They are guaranteed to loose.
Second, you got to have money for bail and lawyers, and the good sense to use it wisely. Most everybody commits a crime at some point in time, there are too many laws on the books for any but the most closeted introvert to stay completely legit. But when you get caught, can you finesse your way out of it. But going back to the Monopoly analogy, you have to be able to do that within the rules of the game, and too few of us understand those rules.
Third and finally, you best be lucky. I personally have been handcuffed a half dozen times in my life, had police pull guns on me at least another 5 or so, and I'm 42 and free to tell the story, with less than 12 hours of detention on my record. As much as I credit being smarter than the average bear, I also know that any one of those times could have been the one that made me another statistic.
@Illfan, I agree with you 100%. DV is pushing the envelope with the shoes thing. The gestapo is running rampant in our communities and i should be disturbed about walking 10 steps barefooted?
As to film project, I am currently a little short of 200K (check back with me next March), however I may have other resources and skills to offer what sounds like a worthy project. Holla at a bro, and if I can do anything for you I will.
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