U.S. Has World's Highest Incarceration
Rates
It's the first time the US government has released estimates of
the extent of imprisonment, and the report's statistics have broad
implications for everything from state fiscal crises to how other
nations view the American experience.
If current trends continue, it means that a black male in the
United States would have about a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison
during his lifetime. For a Hispanic male, it's 1 in 6; for a white
male, 1 in 17.
The numbers come after many years of get-tough policies--and
years when violent-crime rates have generally fallen. But to some
observers, they point to broader failures in U.S. society,
particularly in regard to racial minorities and others who are
economically disadvantaged.
"These new numbers are shocking enough, but what we don't see are
the ripple effects of what they mean: For the generation of black
children today, there's almost an inevitable aspect of going to
prison," says Marc Mauer, assistant director of The Sentencing
Project, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington. "We have
the wealthiest society in human history, and we maintain the highest
level of imprisonment. It's striking what that says about our
approach to social problems and inequality."
Numbering in the millions
Justice Department analysts say that experts in criminal justice
have long known of the stark disparities in prison experience, but
they have never been as fully documented. By the end of year 2001,
some 1,319,000 adults were confined in state or federal prisons. An
estimated 4,299,000 former prisoners are still alive, the new report
concludes.
"What we are seeing is a substantial involvement of the public in
the criminal-justice system. It raises a lot of questions in the
national dialogue on everything from voting and sentencing to
priorities related to state's expenditures," says Allen Beck, chief
of correction statistics at the Bureau of Justice Statistics, who
directed the report.
Nor does the impact of incarceration end with the sentence.
Former inmates can be excluded from receiving public assistance,
living in public housing, or receiving financial aid for college.
Ex-felons are prohibited from voting in many states. And with the
increased use of background checks--especially since 9/11--they may
be permanently locked out of jobs in many professions, including
education, child care, driving a bus, or working in a nursing home.
Enfranchisement for ex-felons
More than 4 million prisoners or former prisoners are denied a
right to vote; in 12 states, that ban is for life.
"That's why racial profiling has become such a priority issue for
African-Americans, because it is the gateway to just such a
statistic," says Yvonne Scruggs-Leftwich, chief operating officer of
the Black Leadership Forum, in Washington. "It means that large
numbers in the African-American community are disenfranchised,
sometimes permanently."
Some states are already scaling back prohibitions or limits on
voting affecting former inmates, including Maryland, Delaware, New
Mexico, and Texas.
In addition, critics say that efforts to purge voting rolls of
former felons could lead to abuses, and effectively disenfranchise
many minority voters.
"On the day of the 2000 [presidential] election, there were an
estimated 600,000 former felons who had completed their sentence yet
because of Florida's restrictive laws were unable to vote," says Mr.
Mauer of the Sentencing Project.
The new report also informs - but does not settle - one of the
toughest debates in American politics: whether high rates of
imprisonment are related to a drop in crime rates over the past
decade.
The prison population has quadrupled since 1980. Much of that
surge is the result of public policy, such as the war on drugs and
mandatory minimum sentencing. Nearly 1 in 4 of the inmates in
federal and state prisons are there because of drug-related
offenses, most of them nonviolent.
Narcotic-related arrests
New drug policies have especially affected incarceration rates
for women, which have increased at nearly double the rate for men
since 1980. Nearly 1 in 3 women in prison today are serving
sentences for drug-related crimes.
"A lot of people think that the reason crime rates have been
dropping over the past several years is, in part, because we're
incarcerating the people most likely to commit crimes," says Stephan
Thernstrom, a historian at Harvard University.
Others say the drop has more to do with factors such as a
generally healthy economy in the 1990s, more opportunity for urban
youth, or better community policing.
But no one disagrees that prison experience will be a part of the
lives of more and more Americans. By 2010, the number of American
residents in prison or with prison experience is expected to jump to
7.7 million, or 3.4 percent of all adults, according to the new
report.
