Why GenXr's should care about prisoners.
Like many of my fellow
suburbian-raised Gen-X'rs, I had this arrogant complex growing up that
we'd all been ordained as the purveyors of hope for our clueless generation of
younger sisters who "accidentally" came along about the time Pearl
Jam released Ten. So, I'm projecting here, but that's why we are
all seeming to show concern for the alarming rate of prison population
growth. But, instead of saving the day, I figured out that this has been a real
thing since we were in kindergarten and we aren't the climatic social
heroes we thought we were. The reality is that the "issue" of prison
population growth is cyclical and harvest season is upon us.
We started sowing seeds of prisoners
in the early 1980's surrounding the push for the Anti-Drug Act made infamous by
the cocaine-related death of a promising young basketball player. Campaigning
politicians then made good on their promises to get tough on drug crime when
elected; and in the late 80's, Bush (41) successfully drew from the prisoner
furlough program in Massachusetts that released inmates early to work their off
debt on the outside to create an ad homonym attack calling
Dukakis "soft on crime".
Today there is no argument that can
dispute the disproportionate number of minorities and mentally ill and
non-violent drug offenders in America's prisons. But it wasn't always this way;
and it doesn't have to stay this way, either. The roots of corrections in America
are found in the Quaker code created by William Penn in the late 1600's. His
goal to rehabilitate coincided with his compassionate, Amish, beliefs. But was
repealed in 1718 (coincidentally, he died that year).
72 years later in Pennsylvania, Dr.
Benjamin Rush re-etablished the Quaker code and then converted a wing of the
Walnut Street Jail into the nation's first penitentiary which leads me to why
this issue should concern you and me and the rest of us wanna-be hero Genxrs:
From 1790 to 1980 our nation's
combined citizen prison population grew from 0 people to 300,000. But from 1980
to 2010, our prison population grew from 300,000 to 1.6 million.
Yes, 1.6 million people.
So, without further delay, I thought
I would breakdown the current 2.3 million people behind bars in detail so you
can see where the $68.7 billion dollars in direct expenditures for
corrections in America are spent.
Number
of federal prisons:
117
Number
of Federal prisoners:
216,889
Number
of state prisons:
1250
Number
of state prisoners:
1,395,356
Number
of ADX prisons (mile-high meets Alcatraz):
1
State
prisoner admission total, 2010:
649,677
State
prisoners admitted for parole violations, 2010
227,311
Percentage
of parole violators admitted without a new sentence, 2010
72
US
Corrections budget, 2006 (USD)
$68,700,000,000
National
Drug Control Policy's Operations Annual Budget JUST for
interdiction/investigation, 2000 (USD)
$10,000,000,000
Percentage
of American inmates serving sentences for drug crimes, 2010
<50%>
One reason that our prisoners are
growing exponentially might be that 29 states have now adopted
truth in sentencing laws requiring inmates to serve 85% of their sentences
before being eligible for release (high recidivism rates caused federal prisons
to do away with parole altogether in 2009). Studies show direct correlations
between length of stay and recidivism. The longer an inmate is in prison, the
more likely s/he is to return.
"I'll take American prison
population discrepancy for $200, Alex"
Answer: "Nearly 800,000
Americans are detained in these facilities awaiting trial or serving sentences
for misdemeanor offenses."
Question: "What are
Jails?"
"Correct!"
Jails house the remanding 726,000
offenders. Many of whom would be free if they could afford bail.
An additional 7 million people
are on probation and there are 3000-bed prisons being built right now as we
speak in Pennsylvania and California.
Gen Xrs are the kings of ending
cycles. We've ended horrible social atrocities like Z-Cavarricci's. We can end
this, too.
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