Posted on 04/25/2005 6:53:27 PM PDT by tbird5
WASHINGTON — While the U.S. crime rate has fallen over the past decade, the number of people in prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates released, the government reports.
The population of the nation's prisons and jails has grown by about 900 inmates each week between mid-2003 and mid-2004, according to figures released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. By last June 30 the system held 2.1 million people, or one in every 138 U.S. residents.
Texas, the state with the most people behind bars, reported that its prison population climbed from 167,532 inmates in 2003 to 169,110 inmates in 2004, an increase of 0.9 percent.
Paige Harrison, the report's co-author, said the U.S. increase can be attributed largely to get-tough policies enacted in the 1980s and 1990s. Among them are mandatory drug sentences, "three-strikes-and-you're-out" laws for repeat offenders and "truth-in-sentencing" laws that restrict early releases.
"As a whole most of these policies remain in place," she said. "These policies were a reaction to the rise in crime in the '80s and early '90s."
Malcolm Young, executive director of the Sentencing Project, which promotes alternatives to prison, said, "We're working under the burden of laws and practices that have developed over 30 years that have focused on punishment and prison as our primary response to crime."
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Duh...JFK
"Headless Body Found In Topless Bar"
Maybe the crime rate is down because more criminals are in jail. I love the way that they use indications that the longer sentences are working as an argument to do away with them.
no kidding. next we'll learn there are very low recidivism rates when we execute murderers.
Maybe the crime rate is down because more of the people that are committing crimes are now in prison where they belong :)
It's working, then.
What gives?
What about recidivism on FR? This is at least the fourth posting of this article.
Fortunately, JimRobb isn't going to killfile any Freepers.
The side of the elite is that since the crime rate is down, we can change sentencing laws. Additionally, the question that is asked is, "Why continue with these punative sentencing guidelines?"
The side of the average American is that when criminals are locked up, crime goes down. Additionally, the question asked by the average American is "What the hell is so difficult to figure out about this?"
I wish I could remember who wrote that OP-ED...JFK
The number of prisoners is going up, but the fraction of the US population in prison is going down. Two guesses as which of these correlates best with the crime rate.
What is worse is these knuckleheads actually believe this is news!
What should be our response to crime except punishment and prison?
True true...related.
'Tis a puzzlement. (/sarc off)
The MSM, always happy to get/put it backasswards ain't they?
From dictionary.com:
but
conj.
- On the contrary
- Contrary to expectation
Contrary to expectation??? On what planet?
And in other news, "Car Accidents Down, But Vehicular Death Rate Drops"
In other news today, researchers have determined that water is wet.
I'd say a good percentage of the rise is attributable to the illehal immigrant population and we know the MSM won't report on that.
How many are illegal immigrants ?
Remember that someone edited it and the city desk approved running the story so that's two more morons in the chain.
You mean to tell me the crime rate drops when the crooks are in jail? That's crazy! Why, it might even be controversial!
/Sarcasm
Next they will be telling us that the number of religious people in the colleges and universities has something to do with the fact that religious people have larger families and secular humanists and communists have more abortions.
Lousy headline. Should be:"Prison Population on the Rise, so Crime Rate Down".
"While the U.S. crime rate has fallen over the past decade, the number of people in prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates released"
Gee, does that mean we should release more inmates so that we can get the crime ratio up to what it was 15 years ago?
It goes wayyy beyond the headline. There's a lousy ideology behind the whole article, for which a lousy headline is but the most tiny symptom.
OMFG....we were poking fun at this exact same stupid headline over a year ago.
I'm thinking we get one of these about every 6 months.
I am no expert on penology, but I doubt that that the threat of punishment will deter crime.
The willingness to do evil springs from character flaws within the man; unless a man - whether in jail or free - wants to "rehabilitate" his inner self, sooner or later those character flaws will grow dominant enough to cause action.
When that happens, the threat of punishment becomes irrelevant.
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