The Criminal Justice System

Posted August 19th 2011 at 5:07 am by admin

Cold Hard Facts:

• One in 100 persons in the United States is incarcerated.
• 2.2 million persons in the United States are incarcerated.
• The United States incarcerates more persons per capita than any other country ever in the world.
• An estimated 80 – 85% of state prisoners in California has a substance abuse-related problem. Of these, 5% receive treatment.
• At a rate of 71%, California has the highest rate of “recidivism” (return to custody) in the United States.
• Incarceration costs taxpayers $42,000 per year per prisoner.
• With approximately 20,000 inmates, Los Angeles County has the largest jail system in the world.
• Los Angeles County jails hold more mentally ill persons under one roof than are held anywhere else in the U.S., including institutions designed for the mentally ill.
|• African-American men abuse drugs at a rate that is equivalent to Caucasian men. However, five times more African-American males are sentenced to jail or prison for drug-related crimes than are Caucasian males.
• In 2002, one in four of the persons diagnosed with HIV/AIDS had been released from prison.
• The correlation between dropping out of school and prison is greater than the correlation between smoking and cancer.
• The two most common factors amongst released prisoners who successfully complete parole are intact family ties and employment.
• There are two million children with incarcerated parents in the United States. Without intervention, these children are considered to be six times more likely than their peers to become criminal offenders.

Sources:
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
Oregon Department of Correction
The New York Times
The Prison-Industrial Complex, Eric Schlosser, The Atlantic Monthly, December, 1998

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