STASTISTICS THAT DO NOT LIE!

STASTISTICS THAT DO NOT LIE!

(Ray Walmsley, Christian Henrichson, Ruth Delaney, Vera)

(The Punishing Decade, The Pew Center on the States, Suevon Lee)

(Debtors Prison, Globe Newspaper Company, U.S. Department of Prisons)

(Behind Bars in America, Boston Globe, Pro-Publica, Washington Post, Frazer Chronicle) 

 

It is eerily strange, prisons for profit, it means that there are some people out there actually rooting for criminal acts in the United States. Why nobody should be surprised by this relatively new industry…..because if there’s a way to make money, industrious Americans not only will take advantage of the situation, but will embrace, and enhance it.

 

Incarceration in the United States is one of the main forms of punishment, rehabilitation, or both for the commission of felony and other offenses today. The U.S. has the highest documented incarceration in the world; in 2010 the rate of incarceration was 743 adults per 100,000 population. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics…..2,266,800 adults were guests of the fed, state, county, cities or private (for profit) restriction facilities.

 

Additionally, 4,814,200 adults were on probation or parole programs, almost 3% of the adult residents of the United States. Clearly with such an immense number of people, (more than 7 million) for the punishment and rehabilitation efforts should be paying off, however, according to statistics, they aren’t.

 

The United States has by far the highest incarceration rate in the world (it’s nice to know that we are Bona Fide leaders without dispute), Russia is second with around 900,000, while Japan lags behind with a bit less than a hundred thousand adult prisoners.       

 

The growth of the private detention industry has become a subject of some scrutiny as a number of adult prisoners are being housed in prisons run by sheriffs or private companies as part of a broader financial incentive scheme, and goes beyond the detention of just criminal prisoners.

 

THESE FIGURES ABSOLUTELY DO NOT LIE

There are two major incarceration companies that dominate the industry of housing adult law breakers from across the country. According to the Bureau of Justice, Corrections Corporation of America, and the Geo Group, Inc. can house over 160,000 adult prisoners, have more than 120 facilities across the country, combined more than $3 billion dollars in revenue, and pay their executive directors in excess of $9 million dollars.

 

For these private corrections facilities there is absolutely no incentive to rehabilitate their inmates, and this is born out in the number of inmate-on-inmate assaults…..more than 400…..recorded, the number could be higher. There also is no statistical information on the number of inmate that is killed through these incarcerations for profit facilities.

 

There also has been a change for the type of inmate that can receive a hefty sentence for what is termed white collar crimes, passion or drugs, or a multitude of misdemeanor crimes. In some instances…..jurisdictions, and judges, the punishment meted out for these crimes is often severe.

 

There is something wrong with the incarceration threat, when, since 1980, when there were 4,700 drug offence prisoners, that figure has ballooned to 97,500 in 2010, an increase of almost 25%. Each year there is a total of 25,000 convictions for drug related crimes, 11,250 for street dealing or delivery, and more than 30% of arrests come from the black community and 40% from the Hispanic sections.

There are a total of 132 federal prisons, correctional center offices, regional offices and institutions throughout the United States. Persistent fiscal challenges in the United States have spurred scrutiny of government spending. In a report by Vera (Institute of Justice), the following items were listed as the greatest cost drivers outside corrections departments;

1. underfunded retiree health care to employees, $1.9 billion

2. states contributions to retiree health care on behalf of their corrections departments, $837 million

3. employee benefits, such as health care insurance, $613 million

4. state contribution to pensions on behalf of their corrections departments $598 million

5. capital costs, $485 million

6. hospital and other health care for prison population, $355 million

7. underfunded pension contributions for corrections employees, $304 million.

If you add all of these underfunded programs and benefits, the overall amount is truly staggering…..to the tune of $4.8 billion dollars. I’m sure that the Division of Federal Prisons is praying for all of their employees to have the best of health for a very long time.

 

COLLATERAL COST-TAXPAYER COST-END GAME

Not only is the process of incarceration expensive, there are other costs not directly tied to the prison system that, none the less, must be budgeted every year. Legal judgments and claims, statewide administrative costs, private prisons, educational training,

 

With few exceptions prisons do not generate an income, whether inside the prison, or in the general economy, no matter the state, region, or location of the facility. The total cost for correctional institutes in the United States in 2010 was $38,903.304, or a 13.9% budget shortfall.

 

The average per day cost to taxpayer for the entire inmate population is $1,243,487, the average cost per inmate per year…..$31,286, I know people who work an entire year that don’t make that kind of money. With these costs rising, it would seem way past time for some sort of change.

 

Some of these figures to me are staggering, and it’s obvious that changes are necessary and I don’t think that private institutionalizing of criminals is the answer, in fact its little more than a band-aid of an open festering wound.

 

We need better educational situations for inner city kids, more meaningful employment, smarter sentencing, and shorter jail time for non-violent offenders, and those people without extensive criminal backgrounds.

 

We can take care of this problem if we all work at it, before private industry takes over completely and convolutes what is already a murky subject. Of course there are some incorrigible criminals, those people with absolutely no chance of rehabilitation, the kind that needs to be put away in a super-max facility for the rest of their lives.

 

Law enforcement, prosecutors, and the judicial system, which now works in concert, but not always for the right reasons, need to stop keeping statistics, and take a long hard look at themselves, and the profession that they are in.

 

HAVE A NICE DAY!