{"id":623,"date":"2009-04-11T19:59:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-11T23:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/us-leads-the-world-and-south-leads-the-us-in-prisons.html"},"modified":"2009-04-11T19:59:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-11T23:59:00","slug":"us-leads-the-world-and-south-leads-the-us-in-prisons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/us-leads-the-world-and-south-leads-the-us-in-prisons.html","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Leads the World and South Leads the U.S.: In Prisons"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\"incrt.gif\"<\/a>According to the U.S. Department of Justice,\n\nthe number of sentenced inmates incarcerated under state and federal jurisdiction per 100,000 population has increased from 139 in 1980 to 507 in 2007.<\/a>\nThat’s more than tripled.\n

\nThat also gives the U.S.\n\nthe highest per-capita prison population of any country in the world.<\/a>\nAlso the\n\nbiggest prison population;<\/a>\nbigger by far than China or Russia:\n

\nThe United States has the highest incarceration rate and the biggest prison population of any country in the world. Even though the United States represents only 5 percent of the world’s population, it has 25 percent of the world’s prison inmates.\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\"prisonstudies-org.jpg\"<\/a>\nAnd in the U.S., according to the Institute for Southern Studies,\n\nthe South has even higher prison populations per capita.<\/a>\n
\nWhen it came to locking people up, Louisiana leads the South, and the\nSouth leads the nation. Simply put: the South has more of its population\nin prisons or jails than any other part of the country.\n

\nSince 1980, the country’s prison population has quadrupled to more\nthan two million, with the South accounting for nearly half of\nthat increase. The prison population increase can be attributed\nlargely to “tough-on-crime” criminal justice policies enacted in\nthe 1980s and 1990s. Among them are mandatory drug sentences,\n“three-strikes-and-you’re-out” laws for repeat offenders, and\n“truth-in-sentencing” laws that restrict early releases. These draconian\npolicies uniquely\n\nhurt the South<\/a>, especially where enacted with key\nbacking from “get-tough-on-crime” lawmakers (resulting in, among other\nthings, the \ndisenfranchisement of millions of potential Democratic voters<\/a>).\n

\n\n\"208px-Federal_Prisoner_Distribution.png\"<\/a>\nThe effects of the Drug War and its resulting surge in incarceration were\nalso especially hard-felt in the South. By 2000, nine of the 20 states\nwith the highest incarceration rates were in the South. And by 2008, 10\nof the 20 states with the highest rates were in the South. Prevention,\ntreatment and re-entry programs have been slashed while prison budgets\ncontinue to rise.\n

\nThe racial disparity of these policies has been tremendous: Nationally,\nblack adults are four times as likely as whites to be under correctional\ncontrol. One in 11 black adults — 9.2 percent — was under correctional\nsupervision by 2008. And because the majority of African Americans live\nin the Deep South (the highest populations are in Mississippi, Louisiana,\nand Georgia respectively), the racial disparities of “get-tough” policies\nhave been disproportionately felt there.\n

\nIt seems that crime and punishment is now a dominant industry in the Deep\nSouth. By 2008, the top five states with the highest adult incarceration\nrates were in the South: Louisiana leads the way, with one out of every\n55 residents behind bars. Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, and Alabama finish\noff the top five.\n<\/blockquote>\nSo, even if, as the VDT says, jail deaths in Lowndes County, Georgia, are\nno higher than in Fulton or DeKalb Counties<\/a>,\nwhy are the jail populations in all those counties so high in the first place?\n

\nIs it because there are more criminals in the South?\nApparently not:\n

\nDealing out longer sentences and putting more people behind bars have been\nthe hallmarks of Southern states, \nGelb told CNN<\/a>. “The huge differences\nbetween states are mostly due not to crime trends, or social and economic\nforces,” he said. “The rates are different mostly because of choices\nthat the states have made about how they respond to crime.”\n<\/blockquote>\nThe ISS article goes on to suggest several alternatives already tried\nand shown to work in Texas and other states.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the number of sentenced inmates incarcerated under state and federal jurisdiction per 100,000 population has increased from 139 in 1980 to 507 in 2007. That’s more than tripled. That also gives the U.S. the highest per-capita prison population of any country in the world. Also the biggest prison […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1888],"tags":[2062,3,1903,2059,1922,2,1928,2061,2060],"class_list":["post-623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-incarceration","tag-china","tag-georgia","tag-incarceration-2","tag-institute-for-southern-studies","tag-jail","tag-lowndes-county","tag-prison","tag-russia","tag-south"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-a3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}