Cost of locking up Americans too high - Pew study
Mon Mar 2, 2009 7:44pm GMT
WASHINGTON, March 2 (Reuters) - One in every 31 U.S. adults is in the corrections system, which includes jail, prison, probation and supervision, more than double the rate of a quarter century ago, according to a report released on Monday by the Pew Center on the States.
The study, which said the current rate compares to one in 77 in 1982, concluded that with declining resources, more emphasis should be put on community supervision, not jail or prison.
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The United States has the highest incarceration rate and the biggest prison population of any country in the world, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Justice.
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Those numbers are higher in certain areas of the country, and Georgia tops all states with one in 13 adults in the justice system. The other leading states are Idaho, where one in 18 are in corrections and Texas, where the rate is one in 22. In the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., nearly 5 percent of adults are in the city's penal system.
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"The huge differences between states are mostly due not to crime trends, or social and economic forces," Gelb said. "The rates are different mostly because of choices that the states have made about how they respond to crime."
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I've left out a lot of the article. It's at... http://uk.reuters.com/article/market...2?pageNumber=1



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That is some hard hitting police work, I tell you! How big of a pussy does a cop have to be to think, "Wow, I'm going to go bust grandma because she is using her legal marijuana prescription."



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