Word: prisons
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...look to changes in criminal law over the past decades to explain how we achieved this unprecedented rate. Drug crimes account for much of the increase in prison populations. In 12 years, the prison population with drug convictions leapt from 6% in 1979 to 25% in 1991 at the state level and from 25% to 56% at the federal level and these numbers continue to grow. In addition, the courts have become increasing punitive. Arrest rates increased, and defendants are convicted at higher rates for longer sentences. Mass incarceration expanded the net of criminality to include drug offenses and public...
...making us safer, but less so. It is nearly impossible for people with criminal records to get jobs, so they often return to crime in order to support themselves and their families. Sixty percent of former offenders recidivate (commit another crime) within 3 years of their release from prison. One in 10 black children have a parent in prison; one in three black children whose parents have no gone to college will lose a parent to prison by the time they are 14. The unemployment rate for black men is estimated between 30 and 60%, and black people are seven...
...October, the Mass. Dept. of Corrections announced that it will start double bunking inmates at Shirley Prison in order to keep up with the massive influx of inmates. Before we think about the implications of such a policy, it is more important to know what politicians are doing to stem that flow. So far, the answer is nothing. They would rather strain the state’s resources to maintain a popular and highly politicized policy that is actually hurting our state. Double bunking is exactly the sort of short term solution that will sustain the problem of mass incarceration...
...Prisons are not safe places: they create more crime than they cure and the risk of victimization by violent or sexual assault is at least times more for people in prison than in normal society. It is despicable that we take away people’s liberty and dignity so readily under mass incarceration. Worse, while under the state’s so-called care, they are placed in toxic, dangerous, and frightening environments, and we are surprised when they commit more crimes after their release. Increasing the number of correctional officers and placing people in solitary confinement...
...nominee's closest friends and defenders acknowledge that Holder made mistakes in the Rich case. But they explain his support for the FALN clemency as simply executing the President's constitutional right to commute prison sentences. And they say his views of the Starr investigation evolved because of questionable actions by Starr, not White House pressure. Holder will have a chance to answer every challenge to his integrity. The Judiciary Committee will test how well those explanations hold...