On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 9:21 PM, Rick Welykochy <[email protected]> wrote: > > Note that the US prison system has been privatised and is run for > profit. This has resulted in a higher incarceration rate. >
Actually the number of prisoners has been steadily reducing since 2009. The incarceration rate is nearly 1 per 100 head of population, definitely > 1% for the > adult population. By far the majority of inmates are black. > The incarceration rate is around 626 people per 100,000, or much closer to half a percent than "definitely 1%". Black prisoners make up roughly 38% of all prisoners (ie, far from the "majority"), with white prisoners at 35% and Hispanics at 21%. Black and Hispanics do make up a disproportionate number of prisoners relative to the general US population. Probably the most telling figure is that 53% of all prisoners are incarcerated for violent crimes, and over 12% of all prisons are in for murder (not including manslaughter). (All figures taken from the U.S. Department of Justice 'Prisoners in 2012 - Advance Counts", http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p12ac.pdf) Scott _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
