US has world's highest incarceration rate: Justice Department's study

this is not 'new' news, BUT when the rest of the world sees the
USA, it sees a whole lot of problems right here in river city.

think about that --

The USA has a higher incarceration than China.
The USA has a higher incarceration rate than any other country
in the ENTIRE world.

yup boys & gals, thats something to be proud of.<sarcasm>
We jail more than any other place in the world.

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http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en36117&F_catID=&f_type=source

US has world's highest incarceration rate: Justice Department's study

when we privatize prisons....capitalism has gotta make that money, regulations we don't need no stinking regulations.

http://www.ilsr.org/columns/1998/011398.html
Privatizing Prisons is Dangerous to Our Health
<snip>But money isn't really the issue here. Liberty and dignity are. Investors in prison corporations expect to double their money every five years. To meet that goal, costs per inmate must be minimized, the jail cells must be fully occupied, and the inmates themselves must be exploited. Private prisons are dangerous for prisoners and for our social fabric.</snip>


<snip>The best way to maximize the revenue generated by each prisoner is to maximize the cell time of that prisoner. A l992 study by the New Mexico corrections department showed that inmates at womenÕs prisons run by CCA lost "good time" at a rate nearly 8 times higher than their male counterparts at a state run lockup. Good time leads to weekend leaves or early release, both of which reduce corporate revenues.



There is another way prison corporations can make money from their wards: by having their slave labor compete with free labor. Sales of prison goods soared from $392 million in 1980 to $1.31 billion in l994. Prison laborers now make clothes, car parts, computer components, shoes, furniture and many other items. Although state prisons pay minimum wage to inmates, Counterpunch magazine notes that private prisons pay as little as 17 cents per hour. The maximum pay scale at a CCA prison in Tennessee is 50 cents an hour for "highly skilled positions". One Texas state representative could invite Nike to shift its production from Indonesia to Texas by insisting, "We could offer a competitive prison labor."



Since the profits of private prison corporations are in large part dependent on expansion, the industry uses its increasingly formidable clout to expand the number of private prisons and lobbies to increase the severity of sentencing laws, like the three-strikes-and-you're-out law in California.</snip>

Critics of California Governor Davis believe he panders to the prison industry, which can only hurt him in the recall election. He has advocated spending millions of dollars we cannot afford on a new death row and he has denied parole (against recommendations of his own advisory panel) for battered women who have killed their abusers. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16626

Help Davis reorganize his priorities and beat the recall at the same time! Write to him at governor@governor.ca.gov and tell him to quit coddling the corrupt prison industry and pay attention to his constituents. This issue is one that made me waver in my support for Davis, even though he has enacted other progressive legislation for the state, and he needs to hear that is true of MANY people.