From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Subject: The Decline of America: The Police-State
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 16:00:52 GMT

The Decline of America: The Police-State


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From:         "Lawrence K. Kolodney" <lkk%altdorf.ai.mit.edu>
From the New York Times, 1/7/91, p. A14:
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SUMMARY:

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More than 1,000,000 in prison in US
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                     People in jail per 100,000:

(1) U.S.:               426
(2) South Africa:       333
(3) Soviet Union:       268
(*) Europe:             35 to 120
(*) Asia:               21 to 140

        In rate, U.S. has 28% more than South Africa;
        and 59% more than Soviets in prisons.

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Black males in prison per 100,000:

United States:                  3,109
South Africa:                     729
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Since 1980, crime rate down 3.5%; number in prison up 100% (doubled)
In 1980, U.S. ranked third; due to mandatory minimum sentences,
restricted parole eligibility, and "reliying more on imprisonment and
less on alternatives" according to the report.

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                   U.S. Leads World in Imprisonment

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 (AP) - With more than one million people behind
bars, the United States imprisons a larger share of its population
than any other nation, a private research organization has reported.
[..]
The report said its figures on jail inmates are as of June 30, 1989,
and on prison inmates as of Dec. 31, 1989.  The figures are from the
Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics.
[..]
Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project and author of
the report said it showed that "the same policies which have helped
make us the world leader in incarceration have clearly failed to make
us a safe nation.

Commenting on the report, Rep. John Conyers Jr., the Michigan Democrat
who is chairman of the House government Operations Committee, said:
"We've got to stop jailing and start rehabilitating.  We can build all
the jails we think we need and slam the doors down on thousands of
people, but is won't make a bit of difference until we address the
fundamental causes of crime."

[...]

[Largely as a result of this failaure to address the root causes of
crime,] the crime rate in the United States is higher than in many
other countries.  The nation's murder rate is at least seven times
higher than in most European countries.  There were six times as many
robberies and three times as many rapes in the United States as in
former West Germany.

The report said the overall crime rate in the United States has fallen
3.5 percent since 1980, while the nation's prison population doubled
[increased by 100 percent].

The proportion of criminals sentenced to prison jumped 54 percent from
1980 to 1987, the report said.  In 1980, the rate was 196 offenders
imprisoned for every 1,000 arrests for serious crimes.  The 1987 rate
was 301 per 100,000.

Drug-related crime is the biggest cause of the increase in prison
population, the report said, and helps explain the disproportionately
high rate of black male incarceration.  Thirty-eight percent of the
people arrested on drug charges in 1988 were black, up form 30 percent
in 1984.

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Page 138

Crackdowns on drug crimes, mandatory sentencing laws, and a high rate of
recidivism have more than doubled our prison population since 1980, despite
the fact that the crime rate fell slightly during the 1980s. The results:
an annual cost of incarceration estimated at $16 billion and serious prison
overcrowding. As many as forty states are now under federal court order to
ease their overpopulated prisons, often through furlough and early release
programs that are unpopular with the public.

Rates of incarceration per 100,000 population, 1988-90:

COUNTRY          RATE    COUNTRY      RATE

United States    426     Austria       77
South Africa     333     Spain         76
Soviet Union     268     Finland       73
Hungary          196     Switzerland   73
Malaysia         126     Australia     72
Northern Ireland 120     Denmark       68
Hong Kong        118     Belgium       65
Poland           106     Italy         60
New Zealand      100     Sweden        56
United Kingdom    97     Ireland       55
Turkey            96     Norway        48
Germany           85     Japan         45
France            81     Netherlands   40

Sources (for chart and text): The Sentencing Project; Marc Mauer,
"Americans Behind Bars: A Comparison of International Rates of
Incarceration" (Washington, D.C.: The Sentencing Project, 1991): Council of
Europe, Prison Information Bulletin, no. 15, June 1990, p. 6.

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 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  
_We're Number One, Where America Stands -- and Falls -- in the New    
World Order_ by Andrew L Shapiro.   

New York, May 1992, Vintage Books, a division of Random House.   
$10 paperback. ISBN 0-679-73893-2  
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -   

    "America is becoming a land of private greed and public squalor.   
    This book is an indispensable road map through the wreckage. The   
    facts it reveals will startle you. They may depress you. But   
    ideally they'll fire you up to help rebuild this nation."   

                        -Robert B. Reich, author of The Work of Nations   




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