cannabisnews.com: Inmate Total Nears 2 million 





Inmate Total Nears 2 million 
Posted by FoM on December 29, 1999 at 07:31:35 PT
By Gaylord Shaw, Newsday
Source: Boston Globe
On Jan. 1, 1900, there were 57,070 people locked up in local, state, and federal jails and prisons in the United States. That was 122 inmates for every 100,000 Americans.As of midnight Friday, a new study says, there will be 1,982,084 adults in US jails and prisons. That is 725 inmates for every 100,000 Americans.
Before the year 2000 is two months old, America's prison population will reach 2 million - probably hitting that level on Feb. 15, the study predicts. By the end of 2000, if current rates continue, it said, the nation's prison population will reach 2,073,969.''Our incarceration binge is America's real Y2K problem,'' said Jason Ziedenberg, coauthor of the study published this month by the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute. ''As we approach 2 million prisoners in 2000, we have to find alternatives to incarceration to solve America's social problems.''The cost of housing inmates will soon exceed $40 billion a year, the study found, and state governments invariably are spending more on prisons and jails than on colleges and universities.''As we enter the new millennium, the ascendance of prisons as our decade's major public works project and social program is a sad legacy,'' said Vincent Schiraldi, director of the institute, in the report titled ''The Punishing Decade: Prison and Jail Estimates at the Millennium.''The institute describes itself as ''a policy development and research body, which promotes effective and sensible approaches to America's justice system.'' Others in the criminal justice field generally view it as a liberal think tank supported largely by liberal foundations.The institute's research is based largely on nonpolitical statistics from government records dating back 100 years. When crunched in today's computers, the rows and columns of numbers become charts and graphs depicting the results of new laws generated by politicians throughout the country. The get-tough laws include mandatory minimum prison sentences for a range of crimes, especially those involving drugs and guns. By prescribing a fixed minimum jail time to be imposed upon conviction of a crime - such as 15 years in prison for selling 2 ounces of cocaine - the laws prohibit judges from considering extenuating circumstances.The laws have been extended to such offenses as possession of marijuana plants and have brought the imprisonment of an inordinate number of first-time, nonviolent offenders, according to judges and others who decry the trend.Chief Justice William Rehnquist, whose record in a quarter-century on the Supreme Court is anything but soft on crime, has been among the critics. ''These mandatory minimums impose unduly harsh punishment for first-time offenders and have led to an inordinate increase in the prison population,'' he told Congress this year.Others on the highest court also have spoken out. ''Judges should not have their sentencing discretion controlled,'' said Justice Anthony Kennedy.New York generally gets credit, or blame, for starting the trend toward harsher sentences for drug crimes. In 1973, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller won enactment of laws mandating years of jail time for possession of small quantities of drugs and up to life imprisonment for trafficking. In the 1980s, other states enacted drug-sentencing laws modeled on the Rockefeller laws. In 1986, Congress federalized the Rockefeller-style drug laws, enacting statutes that allow drug crimes to be prosecuted in federal as well as state courts, and mandating long prison sentences.But researchers say any correlation between incarceration and crime rates remains elusive. Contrasting New York and California, the study found that between 1992 and 1997, New York state's murder rate fell 54.5 percent while its prison population grew by 30 inmates a week. At the same time, California was adding 270 inmates each week but its murder rate fell by 28 percent.This story ran on page A16 of the Boston Globe on 12/29/1999. © Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company. 
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Comment #1 posted by Been There on November 26, 2002 at 14:12:55 PT:
prison for marijuana?
I have served 5 yrs. What for you ask? Marijuana. Not even a lot. While I was incarcerated I found that there were people who had killed someone, involentary manslaurder and only done 3 yrs. before making parole. Is this fair?
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