U.S. Prison Population has Biggest Rise in Six Years

"The United States, which has the most prisoners of any country in the world, last year recorded the largest increase in the number of people in prisons and jails since 2000, the Justice Department reported on Wednesday."

Increases in violent crime, drug offenses, recidivism, and mandatory sentences have all contributed to an increase of 62,000 inmates in the last 12 months. There are now 2,245,000 prisoners in state, federal, and local prisons and jails. The United States has the largest prison population in the world, and the numbers are even more impressive when compared with China's, with the second largest number of prisoners. China has approximately 1.5 million prisoners, but the nation's population is 1,321,851,888, compared to the U.S. population of 301,139,947. The U.S. prison system is badly overcrowded, and one major reason is long sentences for drug offenses, over which judges no longer have any discretion. Where they could once impose comparatively light sentences for first time drug offenders, or users who had no part in the drug trade, they must now hand down sentences determined by state and federal laws. One of the unanticipated outcomes of overcrowding in prisons is a rise in violence, and consequent punishment of additional time to be served. The system is effectively a revolving door, with increasing numbers of parolees returning to prison for new offenses. Jason Ziedenberg of the Justice Policy Institute said "Billions of public safety dollars are absorbed by prison expansion and limits the nation's ability to focus on more effective strategies to promote public safety." Part of any such strategy would be real attempts at rehabilitation, but most prisons have neither the space nor the funds for such programs. Instead, more and more prisoners are doing piecework for large corporations. Since that type of work is frequently exported to developing nations, the addition of prisoners to the work force means that prisoners are released with work "skills" that are virtually useless in the outside world.