Lots of prison news today. On the U.S. prison boom, a new study from the Pew Center on the States, 1 in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections, reports that one in thirty-one people in the United States, is either in prison or on probation or parole, which makes for 7.3 million people under correctional supervision. The study emphasizes the cost to state budgets:
An article in today's Boston Herald reports that according to the Pew study, our fair commonwealth of Massachusetts ranks fifth among states in the number of people under correctional supervision: 1 in 24, or 206,241 people. Georgia ranked the highest, with one in thirteen, or 562,763.
Today's New York Times has an article on the study, with a great graphic of what percentage of spending in the various states goes to corrections.
Meanwhile, today's Guardian has an article by George Monbiot about the U.S. and U.K. prison booms. He starts out recounting the outrageous tale of those two Penna. judges who took kickbacks for sending lots of juveniles to privately-run facilities. The rest of the article covers the privatization of prisons in the U.K. and how it's accelerated the prison boom there. Hat-tip to George's biggest fan, Larry P. Hat-tip to Lois Ahrens of the Real Cost of Prisons Project for the articles on the Pew study. Here's Monbiot:
This revolting trade in human lives is an incentive to lock people up
The inmate population has soared since Britain started running prisons for profit. Little wonder lobbyists want Titan jails
Read the rest of the article.
