Overcriminalization Alert
November 30, 2006
Today the Department of Justice has released statistics showing that 1-in-32 adults are "in the system." That is, they're in prison, or on probation or parole. Of those people, "inmates in federal prison for drug offenses [account] for 49 percent of total prison population growth." Even more depressing:
In the 25-29 age group, 8.1 percent — about one in every 13 — of black men are incarcerated, compared with 2.6 percent of Hispanic men and 1.1 percent of white men. And it's not much different among women. By the end of 2005, black women were more than twice as likely as Hispanics and over three times as white women to be in prison.
Forgive me for paraphrasing Jesse Jackson, but there's a real problem when we as a society spend more money sending black men to jail than we do to Yale.