U.S. Imprisons One in 100 Adults

From the New York Times:

For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults are behind bars, according to a new report.

Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million, after three decades of growth that has seen the prison population nearly triple. Another 723,000 people are in local jails.

The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 adult Hispanic men is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 adult black men is, too, as is one in nine black men ages 20 to 34.

It’s pretty disturbing reading:

The United States imprisons more people than any other nation in the world. China is second, with 1.5 million people behind bars. The gap is even wider in percentage terms.

Some of this is very pointless and involves nonviolent drug crimes and drink driving:

“We have 5,500 D.W.I offenders in prison,” [Texas State Senator John Whitmire] said, including people caught driving under the influence who had not been in an accident. “They’re in the general population. As serious as drinking and driving is, we should segregate them and give them treatment.”

Of course the article does point out that violent crime rates have been dropping — that’s the bonus of locking up the 1% of the population who have real problems with impulse control — but there have to be better and cheaper alternatives to dealing with people who commit offenses such as possessing drugs.

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