In Spring 2021, 1.8 million people were incarcerated in the United States, VERA Incarceration Trends

Appearing here is a report on the U.S. prison population with interactive map features that are helpful for determining state-by-state comparisons, as well as some county-level data. It's well known that, per capita, our country incarcerates more of its population than any other country in the world (with one weird known exception). Racial disparities with respect to people of color are wide, especially for African Americans. 

Note: Also read "States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2021" by Emily Widra and Tiana Herring in the Prison Policy Initiative (Sept. 2021) whose report positions Texas next to other industrialized countries in the world. We here in Texas are literally off the charts!

For me, the most striking aspect of this report was that despite declining prison populations and jail incarceration since the early 2000s, this trend is dramatically offset by increases in our nation's smaller cities and rural areas that further manifest high rates of females of color incarceration. These inequities, as we know, are not only due to structural racism and implicit bias involving all the players in the school-to-prison industrial complex, but also by the profit in prisons and the jobs they create that help sustain rural areas and smaller cities.

-Angela Valenzuela

In Spring 2021, 1.8 million

people were incarcerated in the United States.

People are sent to jails and prisons more than 11 million times each year.

Updated: December 16, 2021 2:41 AM UTC

After decades of growth in incarceration across the United States, the number of people in jail and prison decreased in recent years. However, these national declines mask significant differences in jail and prison trends across counties, states, and regions. Use the map below to explore how your county compares to others along five key incarceration metrics.

Go to VERA Interactive website

Jail Incarceration by Geography

Although jail populations in the nation’s biggest cities began to decline in the early 2000s, jail incarceration has risen dramatically in smaller cities and rural areas. Today, roughly half of all people incarcerated in local jails are in smaller cities and rural communities. The smaller city and rural jail boom has been fueled, in part, by federal- and state-level policies. But mass incarceration is also a local problem, driven by the policies and operations of over 3,000 local jails and justice systems.

                                                Go to VERA Interactive website

State-level Incarceration Trends

Despite substantial decreases in incarceration in a small number of states over the last two decades―and unprecedented reductions in 2020―the story of U.S. incarceration has been one of remarkable growth. Use the charts below to see which states have seen the biggest increases in overall jail and prison incarceration.

                                                 Go to VERA Interactive website

Racial Disparities in Incarceration

People of color―and Black people in particular―are incarcerated at strikingly higher rates than white people in jails and prisons across the country. These racial disparities reflect a system that treats Black people more harshly than white people at every stage of the criminal legal process. Racial disparities in incarceration cause disproportionate economic, health, and social harms to communities of color. Use the charts below to compare incarceration rates for each racial group.

Black people are incarcerated at higher rates than white people across the rural-urban spectrum. Although urban areas still have the biggest racial disparities, they have made larger strides in reducing racial disparities over the past three decades than have rural counties and smaller cities, where total incarceration rates today are the highest.

                                              `Go to VERA Interactive website

County Comparisons

Mass incarceration is a local problem that requires local solutions. Use the table below to see how key incarceration metrics compare for different U.S. counties. For each state, the table shows the county with the highest jail incarceration rate and the highest resident population.

 

Trump's Forced Expulsion Constitutes as a Crime Against Humanity

Donald J. Trump's proposed removal of 3 million undocumented immigrants would have to constitute as a crime against humanity.  Practice Relating to Rule 129. The Act of Displacement

The number that Trump used in the 60 Minutes program today is a Pinocchio number.  Being deported and coming back into the country is a federal crime.  Illegal entry into the country is a misdemeanor.  Re-entry after being deported is a felony.

The total number of undocumented immigrants in the United States is 11.4 million.  3 million out of 11.4 million is 26% or 1/4 of the total undocumented population in the United States.

Hispanics account for 50 % of new federal prison populations.  The breakdown for federal Hispanic incarceration in 1991 was 60% for drugs and 20% for immigration causes.  By 2007, the numbers were reversed, 60% for immigration offenses and 20% for drug offenses.

Mass deportations of people are generally treated as crimes against humanity.  3 million persons is a large number.  In 1933 through 1944 Germany, the Germans Nazis transported millions of persons to over 40,000 concentration camps, included in these number are the 6 million Jews who were eventually executed by the Third Reich.

Most of us have a vivid memory of Jews being loaded onto freight trains as they were moved out to these concentration camps.  100 persons to each train.

It would take 30,000 train cars to deport 3 million undocumented immigrants.  It would take 120,000 freight cars to displace, forcibly move, 11 million undocumented immigrants.

Nationally, Whites make up 64% of the US population and account for 39% of the incarcerated population, Hispanics, are 16% of the US population and 17% of the incarcerated population and Blacks account for 13% of the US population and 40% of the incarcerated population.  In 2013 the total number of incarcerated persons in the US was 2,220,300 and the number on parole or supervised probation numbered 4,751,400.

"Hispanics represented nearly one-in-three (31%) inmates incarcerated in federal prisons in 2007, a greater share than whites (28%) but a smaller share than blacks (37%) (Bureau of Justice Statistics Program). This stands in sharp contrast to the ethnic and racial makeup of state prisons and local jails, where more than nine-in-ten (91%) of the 2.3 million inmates in this country are held. Among inmates held in state prisons, 19% were Hispanic, 36% were white and 39% were black in 2005 (West and Sabol, 2008). Among inmates held in local jails, 16% were Hispanic, 43% were white and 39% were black in 2007 (Pastore and Maguire, 2009)."

 

Source: PEW - A Rising Share: Hispanics and Federal Crime

Ice currently holds 41,000 undocumented immigrants.

From the numbers above, you can get an understanding of where the Trump Gestapo is going to pick up the first few hundred thousand undocumented immigrants to deport, i.e., displace.  Here they are going to have to wait a few years for these persons to be released.  So where will the Trump Gestapo find the other 2,700,000 "criminal" undocumented persons to deport or possible incarcerate?

The Trump Gestapo will go house by house, workplace by workplace, bars, restaurants, farm fields, barrios identifying each of the remaining 2,700,000 of them.

Like in Nazi Germany, today the Trump Gestapo comes for 3 million undocumented immigrants, tomorrow it comes for the remaining 8 million.  The day after, its comes for the 4 million natural born citizens of undocumented families.

Forced displacement, that is, expulsion, of 15 million undocumented immigrants and their natural born children is about where Nazi Germany got to in 1942 Europe.  You know the rest of the story.  We do not need another Holocaust Museum.

 

 

Author:  Voice of the Mainland, a LULAC Leader from Texas.  The League of United Latin American Citizens is the oldest and largest Latino civil rights in the U.S.  

ACLU Report Blasts Private Prisons

Check out the full report: Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration.

Here's the Executive Summary:

The imprisonment of human beings at record levels is both a moral failure and an economic one — especially at a time when more and more Americans are struggling to make ends meet and when state governments confront enormous fiscal crises. This report finds, however, that mass incarceration provides a gigantic windfall for one special interest group — the private prison industry — even as current incarceration levels harm the country as a whole. While the nation's unprecedented rate of imprisonment deprives individuals of freedom, wrests loved ones from their families, and drains the resources of governments, communities, and taxpayers, the private prison industry reaps lucrative rewards. As the public good suffers from mass incarceration, private prison companies obtain more and more government dollars, and private prison executives at the leading companies rake in enormous compensation packages, in some cases totaling millions of dollars.

The Spoils of Mass Incarceration
The United States imprisons more people — both per capita and in absolute terms — than any other nation in the world, including Russia, China, and Iran. Over the past four decades, imprisonment in the United States has increased explosively, spurred by criminal laws that impose steep sentences and curtail the opportunity to earn probation and parole. The current incarceration rate deprives record numbers of individuals of their liberty, disproportionately affects people of color, and has at best a minimal effect on public safety. Meanwhile, the crippling cost of imprisoning increasing numbers of Americans saddles government budgets with rising debt and exacerbates the current fiscal crises confronting states across the nation.

Leading private prison companies essentially admit that their business model depends on high rates of incarceration. For example, in a 2010 Annual Report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison company, stated: "The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by . . . leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices . . . ."

As incarceration rates skyrocket, the private prison industry expands at exponential rates, holding ever more people in its prisons and jails, and generating massive profits. Private prisons for adults were virtually non-existent until the early 1980s, but the number of prisoners in private prisons increased by approximately 1600% between 1990 and 2009. Today, for-profit companies are responsible for approximately 6% of state prisoners, 16% of federal prisoners, and, according to one report, nearly half of all immigrants detained by the federal government. In 2010, the two largest private prison companies alone received nearly $3 billion dollars in revenue, and their top executives, according to one source, each received annual compensation packages worth well over $3 million.

A Danger to State Finances
While supporters of privatization tout the idea that governments can save money through private facilities, the evidence for supposed cost savings is mixed at best. As state governments across the nation confront deep fiscal deficits, the assertion that private prisons demonstrably reduce the costs of incarceration can be dangerous and irresponsible. Such claims may lure states into building private prisons or privatizing existing ones rather than reducing incarceration rates and limiting corrections spending through serious criminal justice reform.

This year, advocates of for-profit prisons trotted out privatization schemes as a supposed answer to budgetary woes in numerous states:

Arizona has announced plans to award 5,000 additional prison beds to private contractors, despite a recent statement by the Arizona Auditor General that for-profit imprisonment in Arizona may cost more than incarceration in publicly-operated facilities. Arizona's Department of Corrections is the only large agency in that state not subject to a budget cut in fiscal year 2012 — in fact, the Department's budget increased by $10 million. According to a news report, private prison employees and corporate officers contributed money to Governor Jan Brewer's reelection campaign, and high ranking Brewer Administration officials previously worked as private prison lobbyists.
Florida has responded to exploding incarceration costs largely through increasing reliance on private prisons. Although the assertion that private prisons save taxpayer money is highly questionable, supporters of privatization, according to a recent news report, claim that privatization in Florida is necessary to rein in the prison system's budget, which stood at $2.3 billion in 2010. A recent editorial in the Orlando Sentinel expressed the view that privatization "has eclipsed and shelved potentially more fruitful, cost-effective changes. One of them is sentencing reform." On September 30, 2011, a Florida court enjoined the Department of Corrections from implementing the privatization of prisons in 18 counties, finding that the planned privatization failed to comply with procedures mandated by state law. The court stated, "[t]he decision to issue only one [request for proposal] and only one contract for all 29 prison facilities [subject to proposed privatization] was based on convenience and speed, … rather than on any demonstrated savings or benefit advantage."
Ohio recently announced that it will become, on December 31, 2011, the first state in the nation to sell a publicly operated prison, Lake Erie Correctional Facility, to a private company, CCA. Notably, the head of Ohio's corrections department had served as a managing director of CCA. The claim that prison privatization demonstrably reduces costs and trims government budgets may detract from the critical work of reducing the state's prison population.
Louisiana narrowly defeated a proposal, pushed by Governor Bobby Jindal in a desperate attempt to generate short-term revenue, to sell off three state prisons to private companies. The Louisiana House Appropriations Committee blocked the bill by a vote of 13-12, with legislators expressing deep concern about the wisdom of selling off the state's assets.
The federal government is in the midst of a private prison expansion spree, driven primarily by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency that locks up roughly 400,000 immigrants each year and spends over $1.9 billion annually on custody operations. ICE now intends to create a new network of massive immigration detention centers, managed largely by private companies, in states including New Jersey, Texas, Florida, California and Illinois. According to a news report, in August 2011, ICE's plans to send 1,250 immigration detainees to Essex County, New Jersey threatened to unravel amid allegations that a private prison company seeking the contract, whose executives enjoyed close ties to Governor Chris Christie, received "special treatment" from the county. The fiscal crisis confronting the federal government, however, has done nothing to dampen Washington's spending binge on privatized immigration detention.

Atrocious Conditions
While evidence is mixed, certain empirical studies show a heightened level of violence against prisoners in private institutions. This may reflect in part the higher rate of staff turnover in private prisons, which can result in inexperienced guards walking the tiers. After an infamous escape from an Arizona private prison in 2010, for example, the Arizona Department of Corrections reported that at the prison, "[s]taff are fairly 'green' across all shifts," "are not proficient with weapons," and habitually ignore sounding alarms. Private facilities have also been linked to atrocious conditions. In a juvenile facility in Texas, for example, auditors reported, "[c]ells were filthy, smelled of feces and urine."

Just three weeks before the release of this report, prisoner fights in several locations throughout a private prison in Oklahoma left 46 prisoners injured and required 16 inmates to be sent to the hospital, some of them in critical condition. The risks to safety confronting inmates in private prisons are especially relevant at present, as the U.S. Supreme Court considers a case that could, depending on the outcome, prevent federal prisoners in private institutions from seeking compensation for constitutional violations — including deliberate indifference to prisoners' physical well being.

Shrewd Tactics
Certain private prison companies employ shrewd tactics to obtain more and more government contracts to incarcerate prisoners. In February 2011, for example, a jury convicted former Luzerene County, Pennsylvania Judge Mark Ciavarella of racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy in connection with payments received from a private prison developer. Tactics employed by some private prison companies, or individuals associated with the private prison industry, to gain influence or acquire more contracts or inmates include: use of questionable financial incentives; benefitting from the "revolving door" between public and private corrections; extensive lobbying; lavish campaign contributions; and efforts to control information.

* * * *

Part One of this Report traces the rise of the for-profit prison industry over the past 30 years, demonstrating that private prisons reaped lucrative spoils as incarceration rates reached historic levels. Part Two focuses on the supposed benefits associated with private prisons, showing that the view that private prison companies provide demonstrable economic benefits and humane facilities is debatable at best. Part Three discusses the tactics private prison companies have used to obtain control of more and more human beings and taxpayer dollars.

The time to halt the expansion of for-profit incarceration is now. The evidence that private prisons provide savings compared to publicly operated facilities is highly questionable, and certain studies point to worse conditions in for-profit facilities. The private prison industry helped to create the mass incarceration crisis and feeds off of this social ill. Private prisons cannot be part of the solution — economic or ethical — to the problem of mass incarceration.

-Patricia

by Haleigh Svoboda | Texas Tribune
11/3/2011

A report released Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union criticizes the private prison industry for profiting at the expense of a growing prison population.

The report, titled “Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration," accuses private prison companies of lobbying for laws that result in higher incarceration rates. Higher incarceration rates result in more government contracts, which, according to the report, are the primary source of funding for these companies.

“Mass incarceration needlessly wastes scarce tax dollars, contributes to torn communities, and disproportionally affects people of color; too many nonviolent offenders are behind bars, which contributes nothing to public safety,” Terri Burke, executive director of the ACLU of Texas, said in a press release.

Two leading industry companies, Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group, received a combined $3 billion in annual revenue in 2010. According to the report, the CCA acknowledged in records submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission that current sentencing laws increase the company’s profits.

CCA officials could not be reached for comment. The GEO Group declined to comment.

In 2010, the U.S. prison population made up 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, according to the Congressional Research Service. The U.S. incarcerates roughly 2.3 million people, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

In a press release, the ACLU said that lobbying and campaign contributions are two tactics used by private prison companies to secure more government contracts. The release also said that both CCA and GEO donated to Gov. Rick Perry’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign. Government contracts at the local, state and federal levels make of part of these companies’ revenues.

Cut off school-to-prison pipeline

Link between discipline, incarceration is intolerable

By VERONICA GARCIA | Houston Chronicle
April 19, 2008 Editorial

While Texans agonize over high school graduation rates and dropout rates and falling standardized test scores, another crisis looms, one that may underline some of these other systemic educational problems.

The Texas Education Agency reports that statewide at every single grade level African-American students are overrepresented in the number of students who public schools suspend to disciplinary alternative education programs (DAEP). Latinos are overrepresented in 6th through 11th grades.

For example, while first grade, African-American students made up 14 percent of the general student population, they made up 47 percent of those sent to DAEPs in the 2005-2006 school year. Despite the fact that there are no data to support the assumption that these groups of students misbehave more than others, research by the American Psychological Association states that African-American students may be more severely punished for less serious or subjective reasons.

Also, while students receiving special education account for about 12 percent of the general student body population, they make up 22 percent of the DAEP population, raising concerns of potential violations of federal disability laws.

In the Katy Independent School District, 9 percent of the students are receiving special education, 31 percent are part of the DAEP population. African-Americans make up 9 percent of the student population yet they are 24 percent of the alternative programs.

Last month, when a United Nations committee urged the United States to make sweeping reforms to policies and laws affecting racial and ethnic minorities, one of the specific problems to which they referred was the school-to-prison pipeline, the intersection between our education and criminal justice systems. It's the criminalization of student behavior through zero tolerance policies that embrace punishment over education.

These practices disproportionately target minority students, as well as students with disabilities, for nonviolent, noncriminal behavior.

To be sure, schools have a duty to maintain discipline and order to ensure a safe environment and promote learning. The contradiction is that the discipline practices through which some schools attempt to achieve these goals ultimately funnel students out of our schools and place them at risk of future involvement with the criminal justice system.

A 2006 report by the U.S. Department of Justice cites a consistent decrease in juvenile crime since 1994; yet, between 1995 and 2006 Texas increased the number of juveniles in custody. Also, in 2005, Texas had the third highest adult incarceration rate in the country.

Such high rates of incarceration have a greater impact on people of color and are not sound policy decisions considering the high rates of recidivism and the economics of maintaining these facilities.

In tracing the roots of these problems, many advocates and researchers are finding that these trends begin from within our school systems. About 13 years after the inception of DAEPs, in answer to legislation passed last year, TEA is now drafting minimum standards for DAEPs.

Currently the standards are so minimal that schools are not even required to run these programs a full school day.

Improvements in school discipline must happen at the individual campus level.

We must address and change the reasons Texas students are removed from the classroom.

The ACLU of Texas calls on our state leaders to act on the U.N. recommendations to address the systemic discrimination and injustice that exists in our own back yard.

Garcia is a litigation fellow with the ACLU of Texas Foundation and has spent the past year studying the school-to-prison pipeline in Texas.

Pa. judge sentences 3 to learn English

This is outrageous! -Patricia

Associated Press
Thu Mar 27, 2008

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. - A judge known for creative sentencing has ordered three Spanish-speaking men to learn English or go to jail.

The men, who faced prison for criminal conspiracy to commit robbery, can remain on parole if they learn to read and write English, earn their GEDs and get full-time jobs, Luzerne County Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. said.

The men, Luis Reyes, Ricardo Dominguez and Rafael Guzman-Mateo, plus a fourth defendant, Kelvin Reyes-Rosario, all needed translators when they pleaded guilty Tuesday.

"Do you think we are going to supply you with a translator all of your life?" the judge asked them.

The four, ranging in age from 17 to 22, were in a group that police said accosted two men on a street in May. The two said they were asked if they had marijuana, told to empty their pockets, struck on the head, threatened with a gun and told to stay off the block.

Attorneys for the men said they were studying the legality of the ruling and had not decided whether to appeal. One of the attorneys, Ferris Webby, suggested that the ruling was good for his client, Guzman-Mateo.

"My client is happy," Webby said. "I think it's going to help him."

The judge sentenced the four men to jail terms of four to 24 months. But he gave the three men, who already had served at least four months, immediate parole. Reyes-Rosario remains imprisoned on an unrelated drug charge.

Olszewski ordered the three to return with their parole officers in a year and take an English test. "If they don't pass, they're going in for the 24 (months)," he said.

Olszewski is known for outside-the-box sentencing.

He has ordered young defendants who are school dropouts to finish school. He often orders defendants to get full-time employment. But he also has his staff coordinate with an employment agency to help them find the jobs.

Youth commission could face closure, radical change, lawmakers say

This is even more interesting given the previous post "Texas ranks low in child well-being," which shows that the number of incarcerated youths in Texas equaling 7,662. This article shows a total of 2,400 held in TYCs making me question if the other 5,262 are in adult penitentiaries?? -Patricia

As costs spiral, legislators look for more frugal alternative.

By Mike Ward | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, April 04, 2008

After spending a year trying to reform the Texas Youth Commission, some legislative leaders are discussing a new possibility: a drastic restructuring — and perhaps even shutting it down.

State Sen. John Whitmire, who co-chairs a special legislative committee overseeing the Youth Commission reforms after allegations surfaced last year of sexual abuse of youths, confirmed Thursday that he and several other lawmakers are actively discussing plans to drastically restructure the troubled agency.

One concept under discussion: lock up the most violent, most troubled offenders in a reduced number of lockups, run by a new incarnation of the Youth Commission or perhaps by a new youth division of Texas' adult prison system, and house the rest in locally based treatment and rehabilitation programs.

"We're spending $110,000 a kid now — about $250 million for 2,400 kids — and you could do the new concept for half of what we're spending now, maybe less," Whitmire said. "I've gotten nothing but encouragement from anyone who's been briefed on this so far.

"It makes so much sense, it'll be hard for anyone to argue against this — except maybe the rural counties where the TYC facilities are located."

Most other states have juvenile corrections agencies, though several use them mainly to oversee community-based programs.

Youth Commission Conservator Richard Nedelkoff, who has previously predicted the agency will face changes, said he cannot fathom that the Youth Commission would be abolished, even though it may face drastic restructuring.

"I can't imagine a day that we would not have an agency with authority over troubled youth," he said. "But there is a dialogue going on about what is the ideal juvenile corrections system for Texas, and how to we create that ... what does it look like.

"Dialogue is what we're having at this point. There is no plan yet."

In recent months, some legislative leaders have grown increasingly impatient with the progress of reforms at the Youth Commission, still reeling from the sexual-abuse scandal and subsequent management changes. In addition to frustrations with the slowness of implementing reforms, they have grown tired of perceived administrative miscues — including three shakeups of top management in a year.

Gov. Rick Perry appointed Nedelkoff the latest conservator in December.

State Rep. Jerry Madden, Whitmire's co-chair on the special panel, said he does not favor "shutting anything down or drastically changing anything until we know what we're replacing it with.

"But I think everyone knows the agency may look much different in the future than it does now," he said. "This is a work in progress."

In all, the Youth Commission now holds about 2,400 offenders, about half what it did a year ago. The number of employees: roughly 4,600 approved positions, about the same.

The Youth Commission's top eight or so officials earn $1.8 million a year, a much higher total than a year ago, according to Whitmire.

"Once we got the worst, most violent youth offenders in secure facilities, we could take the rest and let the state funding follow them to programs in their communities, so Houston and San Antonio and the (Dallas-Fort Worth) Metroplex could keep their own kids," Whitmire said.

"This concept is in the initial stages of discussion now, but I think you'll see something coming together on it pretty soon. Where we've been going with this agency makes no sense in the long run."

One big criticism of the agency is that lockups are in remote, rural areas of the state, far from the major cities that most of the youths call home.

On Wednesday, Whitmire said he asked Nedelkoff during a Wednesday meeting to come up with a conceptual plan for the alternatives. Nedelkoff said he is working on several concepts about what the agency could look like in coming years.

Whitmire, Madden and others familiar with the discussions said the possible changes would emphasize community-based programs rather than the institutionalization of troubled youths who are doing time for relatively minor crimes. They might also pay for many of the programs through counties rather than through the Youth Commission — a change that California has recently embraced.

"We have high schools with more kids in one place than what TYC has locked up in a dozen or so facilities, several (of) which we're going to have to spend a lot of additional money on to bring them up to standard," Whitmire said.

"Why spend money like that when there's a less expensive, smarter way to do this?"

Texas ranks low in child well-being, report says

This is really sad. Take a look at the full report, it breaks down state rankings across all indicators. Also, look closely at numbers rather than percentages especially in juvenile incarceration where both Texas and California don't rank the lowest but do have the greatest total number of incarcerations. -Patricia

Report by nonprofit evaluates states on 10 indicators

By Suzannah Gonzales
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, April 03, 2008

Texas ranks 46th among the states in terms of child well-being, according to a report released Wednesday by a nonprofit group that promotes adopting national policies for children, youth and families.

Infant, child and teen deaths were among the 10 indicators considered in the Every Child Matters Education Fund's report, titled "Geography Matters: Child Well-Being in the States."

Texas ranked the worst for births to mothers 15 to 19 years old per 1,000 teen girls, as well as for the percentage of uninsured children. New Hampshire and Rhode Island, respectively, were the top states for those categories.

A combination of poverty, race, education, state tax burdens and declining federal investments in children, among others, explains the differences in child well-being among states, according to the report. The report says there are wide gaps among states.

The states where children live shouldn't adversely affect them, said the report's author and Every Child Matters founder Michael Petit, "but they do."

sgonzales @statesman.com; 445-3616

The 10 bottom states for child well-being, according to an Every Child Matters Education Fund report:

41. Arizona

42. South Dakota

43. Nevada

44. Arkansas

45. South Carolina

46. Texas

47. Oklahoma

48. New Mexico

49. Mississippi

50. Louisiana

The 10 top states:

1. Vermont

2. Massachusetts

3. Connecticut

4. Rhode Island

5. New Hampshire

6. Hawaii

7. Iowa

8. Minnesota

9. Washington

10. Maine

Locked up: racism in the era of neoliberalism

By Angela Davis
Wed Mar 19, 2008

Both race and racism are profoundly historical. Thus if we discard biological and thus essentialist notions of "race" as fallacious, it would be erroneous to assume that we can also wilfully extricate ourselves from histories of race and racism. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we continue to inhabit these histories, which help to constitute our social and psychic worlds.

Neoliberalism sees the market as the very paradigm of freedom and democracy emerges as a synonym for capitalism, which has reemerged as the telos of history. In the official narratives of US history, the historical victories of civil rights are dealt with as the final consolidation of democracy in the US, having relegating racism to the dustbin of history.

The path toward the complete elimination of racism is represented in the neoliberalist discourse of colourblindness. Equality can only be achieved when the law, as well as individual subjects, become blind to race and fail to apprehend the material and ideological work that race continues to do.

When obvious examples of racism appear to the public, they are considered to be isolated aberrations, to be addressed as anachronistic attributes of individual behaviour. There have been a number of such cases in recent months in the US: the noose that was hung on a tree branch by white students at a school in Jena, Louisiana as a sign that black students were prohibited from gathering under that tree; the public use of racist expletives by a well-known white comedian; the racist and misogynist language employed by a well-known radio host in referring to black women on a college basketball team, and finally, recent comments regarding the golfer Tiger Woods.

But if we see these individual eruptions of racism as connected to the persistence and further entrenchment of institutional and structural racism that hides behind the curtain of neoliberalism, their meanings cannot be understood as individual aberrations.

In the cases we have discussed, the racism is explicit and blatant. There is no denying that these are racist utterances. What happens, however, when racism is expressed, not through the words of individuals, but rather through institutional practices that are "mute" - to borrow the term Dana-Ain Davis uses - with respect to racism?

'Mute' racism

The inability to recognise the contemporary persistence of racisms within institutions and other social structures results in the attribution of responsibility for the effects of racisms to the individuals who are its casualties, thus further exacerbating the problem of failing to identify the economic, social, and ideological work of racism.

There is a similar logic undergirding the criminalisation of those communities, which are vastly over-represented in jails and prisons.

By failing to recognise the material forces of racism that are responsible for offering up such large numbers of black and Latino youth to the carceral state, the process of criminalisation imputes responsibility to the individuals who are its casualties, thus reproducing the very conditions that produce racist patterns in incarceration and its seemingly infinite capacity to expand.

The misreading of these racist patterns replicates and reinforces the privatisation that is at the core of neoliberalism, whereby social activity is individualised and the enormous profits generated by the punishment industry are legitimised.

One in 100

On February 28 of this year, the Pew Center issued a report about incarceration in the United States entitled "One in One Hundred: Behind Bars in America 2008". According to the report, one in one hundred adults is now behind bars on any given day. While the numbers themselves are shocking, the vastly disproportionate numbers of people of colour in jails and prison is for the most part responsible for the figure "one in one hundred."

In 1985, there were fewer than 800,000 people behind bars. Today there are almost three times as many imprisoned people and the vast increase has been driven almost entirely by the practices of incarcerating young people of colour.

Although the figures are not comparable, one can argue that a similar dynamic drives imprisonment here in Australia, with imprisoned aboriginal people accounting for ten times their proportion in the general population.

According to neoliberalist explanations, the fact that these young black men are behind bars has little to do with race or racism and everything to do with their own private family upbringing and their inability to take moral responsibility for their actions. Such explanations remain "mute" - to use Dana-Ain Davis's term again - about the social, economic, and historical power of racism. They remain "mute" about the dangerous contemporary work that race continues to do.

'Individual deviancy'

The incarceration of youth of colour - and of increasing numbers of young women of colour (women have constituted the fastest growing sector of the incarcerated population for some time now) - is not viewed as connected to the vast structural changes produced by deregulation, privatisation, by the devaluation of the public good, and by the deterioration of community.

Because there is no public vocabulary which allows us to place these developments within a historical context, individual deviancy is the overarching explanation for the grotesque rise in the numbers of people who are relegated to the country's and the world's prisons.

According to Henry Giroux, "racism survives through the guise of neoliberalism, a kind of repartee that imagines human agency as simply a matter of individualised choices, the only obstacle to effective citizenship and agency being the lack of principled self-help and moral responsibility."

Because racism is viewed as an anachronistic vestige of the past, we fail to grasp the extent to which the long memory of institutions - especially those that constitute the intimately connected circuit of education and incarceration - continue to permit race to determine who has access to education and who has access to incarceration.

While laws have had the effect of privatising racist attitudes and eliminating the explicitly racist practices of institutions, these laws are unable to apprehend the deep structural life of racism and therefore allow it to continue to thrive.

Psychic reservoir of racism

This invisible work of racism not only influences the life chances of millions of people, it helps to nourish a psychic reservoir of racism that often erupts through the utterances and actions of individuals, as in the cases previously mentioned. The frequent retort made by such individuals who are caught in the act is: "I'm not a racist. I don't even know where that came from" can only be answered if we are able to recognise this deep structural life of racism.

The deep structural racism of the criminal justice system affects our lives in complicated ways. What we acknowledged more than a decade ago as the US prison industrial complex through which racism generates enormous profits for private corporations can now be recognised as a global prison industrial complex that profits the world over from postcolonial forms of racism and xenophobia.

With the dismantling of the welfare state and the structural adjustment in the southern region required by global financial institutions, the institution of the prison - which is itself an important product marketed through global capitalism - becomes the privileged site into which surplus impoverished populations are deposited.

Thus new forms of global structural racism are emerging. The deep structural life of racism bleeds out from the US criminal justice system and is having a devastating effect on the political life of the nation and the world.

Angela Y Davis is Professor of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a civil rights activist and former Black Panther. This is an edited transcript of the Vice-Chancellor's Oration, which she delivered at Murdoch University on March 18, 2008.

Immigration and crime

Check out the study "Crime, Corrections, and California: What Does Immigration Have to Do with It?" -Patricia

By Jeff Jacoby | The Boston Globe
Opinon
March 5, 2008

WARMING to one of his favorite themes the other night, CNN's Lou Dobbs repeatedly invoked the phrase "criminal illegal aliens," as he did his best to feed the stereotype that illegal immigrants drive up crime. Dobbs's relentless spleen on this subject, of course, has won him a following. Seal-the-borders nativism won't get anyone elected president - just ask ex-GOP candidates Tom Tancredo, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani - but there is no denying it's good for TV ratings.
more stories like this null

Fortunately, politicians and television personalities aren't the only people interested in immigration and crime. A new study from the Public Policy Institute of California offers significantly more substance on the topic than anything you're likely to encounter on cable TV or in the presidential campaign.

The paper, by economists Kristin F. Butcher and Anne Morrison Piehl, assesses the impact of immigration on crime by analyzing data from California, which has by far the nation's largest population of prison inmates: One-eighth of all state prisoners in the United States are incarcerated in California, as are 30 percent of all inmates who are not American citizens. What Butcher and Piehl demonstrate is that immigrants, far from being more likely to end up behind bars, are dramatically less likely to do so.

The numbers are striking: While immigrants (legal and illegal) account for 35 percent of California adults, they represent just 17 percent of the state's prisoners. Men born in the United States are incarcerated in California prisons at more than 2½ times the rate of

foreign-born men. Within the age group most often involved in crime (ages 18 to 40), US natives - astonishingly - are 10 times more likely to be in prison or jail than immigrants (4.2 percent of the former are in correctional institutions, and just 0.42 percent of the latter). Even when the focus is narrowed to inmates who were born in Mexico and are not citizens - the demographic group most likely to include illegal immigrants - the rate of incarceration is only one-eighth that of men born in the United States.

Butcher and Piehl also compared crime rates among California cities. They found that the cities with greater numbers of recently arrived immigrants have lower crime rates, while cities with fewer immigrants experience higher levels of crime.

"Altogether, this evidence suggests that immigrants have very low rates of criminal activity in California," the researchers write - a finding "consistent with national studies on immigration and crime, which also find low rates of criminal activity for the foreign-born." Butcher and Piehl address the seemingly irreconcilable statistic that nearly one-fifth of federal prison inmates are illegal immigrants. In truth, they explain, there is no contradiction: Since persons arrested for immigration violations are automatically transferred to federal facilities, noncitizens are disproportionately represented among federal inmates. In any case, the federal prison population comprises only 8 percent of the total number of prisoners nationwide.

But you don't have to pore through think-tank studies to recognize that immigration, illegal or otherwise, doesn't drive the US crime rate.

Over the last dozen or so years, the number of illegal immigrants in the United States has doubled to an estimated 12 million. Those same years saw a dramatic nationwide fall in violent crime and property crime. Similarly, the surge in illegal immigration didn't prevent welfare caseloads from falling or millions of new jobs from being created.

Americans may not have the statistics at their fingertips, but most of them understand that immigrants, even those who enter the country without permission, are not here to make trouble but to make a better life for themselves and their families. Yes, Dobbs has his loyalists; in a nation of 300 million people, you can find an audience to whoop it up for just about any cause. But far more recognize that demonizing illegal immigrants is as bootless as it is mean. In opinion polls, only a minority of respondents say illegals should be forced to leave; the consistent majority preference is that illegal immigrants be given a way to earn American citizenship.

The most distressing spectacle of the 2008 presidential race so far was the attempt by Tancredo, Romney, and Giuliani to win their party's nomination through a Dobbsian attack on illegal immigrants. And the most encouraging development? The Republican Party's rejection of that appeal and its elevation of Senator John McCain, who had refused to take part in the immigrant-bashing.

So chalk one up for American common sense. The anti-immigration rabble-rousers haven't disappeared - but none of them will be the next president of the United States.

Raising Children Behind Bars

NY Times Editorial
November 20, 2007

The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 created a far-sighted partnership between the federal government and the states that agreed to remake often barbaric juvenile justice systems in exchange for federal aid. Unfortunately, those gains have been steadily rolled back since the 1990s when states began sending ever larger numbers of juveniles to adult jails — where they face a high risk of being battered, raped or pushed to suicide. The act is due to be reauthorized this year, and Congress needs to use that opportunity to reverse this destructive trend.

As incredible as it seems, many states regard a child as young as 10 as competent to stand trial in juvenile court. More than 40 states regard children as young as 14 as “of age” and old enough to stand trial in adult court. The scope of the problem is laid out in a new report entitled Jailing Juveniles from the Campaign for Youth Justice, an advocacy group based in Washington. Statistics are notoriously hard to get, but perhaps as many as 150,000 young people under the age of 18 are incarcerated in adult jails in any given year.

As many as half of the young people who are transferred to the adult system are never convicted as adults. Many are never convicted at all. By the time the process has run its course, however, one in five of these young people will have spent more than six months in adult jails.

Some jails try to protect young inmates by placing them in isolation, where they are locked in small cells for 23 hours a day. This worsens mental disorders. The study says that young people are 36 times more likely to commit suicide in an adult jail than in a juvenile facility. Young people who survive adult jail too often return home as damaged and dangerous people. Studies show that they are far more likely to commit violent crimes — and to end up back inside — than those who are handled through the juvenile courts.

The rush to criminalize children has set the country on a dangerous path. Congress must now reshape the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act so that it provides the states with the money and the expertise they need to develop more enlightened juvenile justice policies. For starters, it should rewrite the law to prohibit the confinement of children in adult jails.

Youngest inmates tend to serve longer terms in juvenile prisons

I question if communities really are giving up on these youths, or if those communities are left with little, if any, support or means to devise solutions. Sometimes the solution at the local level is to increase policing in these communities, creating yet another layer of problems often left unaddressed. I'm sure those who are members of these communities are familiar with this. -Patricia

The Associated Press | The Houston Chronicle
Nov. 1, 2007


MART, Texas — Juvenile felons sentenced to the Texas Youth Commission at ages 10 to 13 tend to serve longer terms than their older counterparts, according to a newspaper review of agency records.

For the past three years, offenders who start their sentences at ages 10 to 13 have served an average of 34 months. That's 15 months longer than the average term for inmates sentenced at ages 14 to 17, according to the review by the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle.

Inmates arriving at ages 16 and 17 served terms averaging no more than 18 months. Those who started at age 10, the youngest possible, served an average of five years, according to the records. Some of the older offenders were released because they turned 21, the former mandatory age of release.

Critics blame the longer terms on the difficulty for younger children of completing the system's resocialization program required for release.

"It's so difficult for the smaller kids," said Will Harrell, TYC's youth advocate. "They're supposed to come up with a life story. How much of a life story can you articulate at 11 years of age? They don't have the cognitive abilities."

Commission officials said new reforms will make it easier for inmates to secure their release after serving their minimum sentence.

"The burden of proof is now on us to show why this offender should remain in custody," spokesman Tim Savoy said.

Also, the commission is changing its treatment approach in a way that will distinguish between younger and older offenders. A new program aimed at 10- to 13-year-olds is part of an agency overhaul mandated by state leaders in response to a sex abuse scandal.

The agency plans to confine the younger boys, who make up a relatively small part of the overall inmate population, in a single facility, away from the older inmates. The agency is taking bids from private contractors for "a safe residential setting" for boys ages 10 to 13.

Robert E. Morris, a pediatrics professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, said young offenders shouldn't be separated from their families, almost regardless of the crime.

"You do need your folks more at such a young age," said Morris, a leading national expert on adolescent offenders. "Most kids would do better to just go home and perhaps be monitored by a probation officer," with services provided to their families.

Forrest Novy, TYC's director of special education, said it would be good to place the youngest offenders in community-based programs close to home, but those communities have often given up on the offenders. And the correctional system needs to centralize services.

"The downside is they're so far from home," Novy said.

Novy said it will take months to implement the new treatment program for young offenders.

The agency will start rolling out a new resocialization program for all offenders, called CoNEXTions, in December.

Too many Latino men are living in prison

Add to that the collateral consequences from a felony conviction.

By RYAN S. KING and ANGELA MARIA ARBOLEDA | The Modesto Bee
July 30, 2007

Largely obscured by the rancorous debate surrounding U.S. immigration policy is the emergence of a trend that should be a cause of concern to all Latino communities: the explosion of the number of Latinos in prison.

There were 55,000 Latinos doing prison time in the United States in 1985. That figure has increased by more than 400 percent in 20 years, a substantially steeper rate of increase than for whites or blacks.

Currently, there are more than 450,000 Latinos in U.S. prisons or jails.

With one-in-six Latino males born today expected to spend some time in prison during their lives, the future portends devastating consequences for Latino communities.

This incarceration data stands in stark contrast to a growing body of research suggesting that Latinos, who now make up more than one of every five persons held behind bars, are less likely than other groups to commit crime and that the immigration of the 1990s may have been partially responsible for the historic declines in crime.

Causes for rising Latino incarceration are complex, but an important explanatory factor is the "war on drugs." Despite using drugs at a rate proportionate to their share in the general population, Latinos are twice as likely as whites to be sentenced to a state prison on a drug charge. Nearly one in four Latinos sitting in prison has been convicted of a drug offense.

Differential patterns in law enforcement -- where the police choose to pursue the war on drugs -- play a greater role in determining who is arrested and sentenced to prison than general trends in drug use.

Add to that the collateral consequences from a felony conviction.

These can include barriers to employment, denial of certain licenses, lack of access to education and housing aid, loss of voting rights, and, in some cases, deportation.

Such "invisible punishments" create substantial obstacles to a successful re-entry to the community and increase the likelihood of recidivism.

Despite this spate of distressing news, there are efforts that can be undertaken to stem the tide of disproportionate Latino incarceration.

First, lawmakers should heed the growing chorus of public officials, including high-ranking criminal justice practitioners, and revisit the wisdom of our current drug control strategy. This "lock 'em up" approach has resulted in a half-million people behind bars.

It takes a toll on communities of color while doing little to address the underlying causes of drug abuse. Investing in proven prevention and treatment strategies is far more productive than warehousing people. It's a much more effective tool to enhance public safety.

Secondly, state legislaturesshould expand upon the reforms implemented in 22 states since 2004 and reconsider such punitive sentencing provisions as mandatory minimums that expose individualsto punishments grossly disproportionate to the conduct for which they have been charged.

Restoring discretion to sentencing judges would permit full consideration of the circumstances of the offense. This could prevent the reoccurrence of cases like that of first-time offender Weldon Angelos, who, because of inflexible sentencing enhancements, was sentenced to prison for 55 years.

His offense? Three marijuana sales while possessing a weapon he never used.

The criminal justice system does not exist in a vacuum. Crime and its associated costs generally reflect a failure to provide equal access to resources such as education, employment, housing and health care. Inequalities in the criminal justice system extend far beyond policing, courts and corrections.

True reform can be achieved only when we seek to bring a broad range of community stakeholders to the table, and invest not merely in police and prisons but in neighborhoods and people.

King is a policy analyst with The Sentencing Project. E-mail him at rking@sentencingproject.org. Arboleda is associate director, criminal justice policy, with the National Council of La Raza. E-mail her at aarboleda@nclr.org.

Report critiques how Texas districts send students to alternative schools

Referrals depend on where kids live, not their behavior, group says.

By Joshunda Sanders | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, October 19, 2007

Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit public interest group, said Thursday that 167 school districts in Texas refer students to disciplinary alternative education programs at a rate that is more than twice the state's average, even when they have the option not to. Texas has 1,037 school districts.

"More than 100,000 students are referred to (alternative education programs) each year," said Ron Lewis, a Houston lawyer and the incoming Appleseed chairman. "Two-thirds of those students are referred at the discretion of school districts."

The report documents disparities among districts in how students are treated and recommends more standardized rules and increased state oversight.

"Where you go to school, and not your behavior, dictates whether you'll be referred" to an alternative education program, Lewis said.

Researchers for the group said that a history of disciplinary referrals is the single most important factor in determining whether a student will drop out of school. The alternative programs are often the last step for troubled youths before they enter the criminal justice system.

The report found that alternative education students are five times as likely to drop out as their peers in mainstream schools.

Appleseed Executive Director Rebecca Lightsey said that numerous studies have established a link between school dropouts and incarceration. Eighty percent of all Texas prison inmates are school dropouts, and one in three Texas Youth Commission inmates is a dropout, according to the Appleseed report.

When a student is suspended or removed from a classroom for violating school conduct policies, officials can refer that student to an alternative classroom. But in many cases, such placements are not required, and districts have the choice of imposing other sanctions, such as in-school or at-home suspensions.

The Austin school district was cited in the report for referring a disproportionate number of African American, Hispanic and special education students to alternative education programs.

But it was praised for beginning a program that emphasizes early, intensive intervention for some students that is meant to reduce disciplinary referrals.

The report said the Austin, Bastrop, Leander, Lockhart, Round Rock and Taylor school districts referred a disproportionately high percentage of special education students to alternative schools.

For instance, in Austin, special education students make up 12 percent of the total enrollment in the district. But special education students made up 38 percent of all alternative education referrals between 2001 and 2006.

The state average for all referrals is 2 percent of students, the report said.

Some school districts were criticized for sending prekindergarten and kindergarten students to alternative programs. State law says children younger than 6 can be referred to such programs only for taking a firearm to school.

The report listed districts that sent more than 10 prekindergarten and kindergarten students to alternative education and those that sent more than 40 first-graders.

The Leander school district was the only Austin-area district listed. Between 2001 and 2006, Leander referred 19 prekindergarten and kindergarten students and 40 first-graders, according to the report.

A copy of the report is at www.texasappleseed.net/news.shtml.

Lifers as Teenagers, Now Seeking Second Chance

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: October 17, 2007

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — In December, the United Nations took up a resolution calling for the abolition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for children and young teenagers. The vote was 185 to 1, with the United States the lone dissenter.

Indeed, the United States stands alone in the world in convicting young adolescents as adults and sentencing them to live out their lives in prison. According to a new report, there are 73 Americans serving such sentences for crimes they committed at 13 or 14.

Mary Nalls, an 81-year-old retired social worker here, has some thoughts about the matter. Her granddaughter Ashley Jones was 14 when she helped her boyfriend kill her grandfather and aunt — Mrs. Nalls’s husband and daughter — by stabbing and shooting them and then setting them on fire. Ms. Jones also tried to kill her 10-year-old sister.

Mrs. Nalls, who was badly injured in the rampage, showed a visitor to her home a white scar on her forehead, a reminder of the burns that put her into a coma for 30 days. She had also been shot in the shoulder and stabbed in the chest.

“I forgot,” she said later. “They stabbed me in the jaw, too.”

But Mrs. Nalls thinks her granddaughter, now 22, deserves the possibility of a second chance.

“I believe that she should have gotten 15 or 20 years,” Mrs. Nalls said. “If children are under age, sometimes they’re not responsible for what they do.”

The group that plans to release the report on Oct. 17, the Equal Justice Initiative, based in Montgomery, Ala., is one of several human rights organizations that say states should be required to review sentences of juvenile offenders as the decades go by, looking for cases where parole might be warranted.

But prosecutors and victims’ rights groups say there are crimes so terrible and people so dangerous that only life sentences without the possibility of release are a fit moral and practical response.

“I don’t think every 14-year-old who killed someone deserves life without parole,” said Laura Poston, who prosecuted Ms. Jones. “But Ashley planned to kill four people. I don’t think there is a conscience in Ashley, and I certainly think she is a threat to do something similar.”

Specialists in comparative law acknowledge that there have been occasions when young murderers who would have served life terms in the United States were released from prison in Europe and went on to kill again. But comparing legal systems is difficult, in part because the United States is a more violent society and in part because many other nations imprison relatively few people and often only for repeat violent offenses.

“I know of no systematic studies of comparative recidivism rates,” said James Q. Whitman, who teaches comparative criminal law at Yale. “I believe there are recidivism problems in countries like Germany and France, since those are countries that ordinarily incarcerate only dangerous offenders, but at some point they let them out and bad things can happen.”

The differences in the two approaches, legal experts said, are rooted in politics and culture. The European systems emphasize rehabilitation, while the American one stresses individual responsibility and punishment.

Corrections professionals and criminologists here and abroad tend to agree that violent crime is usually a young person’s activity, suggesting that eventual parole could be considered in most cases. But the American legal system is more responsive to popular concerns about crime and attitudes about punishment, while justice systems abroad tend to be administered by career civil servants rather than elected legislators, prosecutors and judges.

In its sentencing of juveniles, as in many other areas, the legal system in the United States goes it alone. American law is, by international standards, a series of innovations and exceptions. From the central role played by juries in civil cases to the election of judges to punitive damages to the disproportionate number of people in prison, the United States is an island in the sea of international law.

And the very issue of whether American judges should ever take account of foreign law is hotly disputed. At the hearings on their Supreme Court nominations, both John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. said they thought it a mistake to consider foreign law in constitutional cases.

But the international consensus against life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders may nonetheless help Ms. Jones. In about a dozen cases recently filed around the country on behalf of 13- and 14-year-olds sentenced to life in prison, lawyers for the inmates relied on a 2005 Supreme Court decision that banned the execution of people who committed crimes when they were younger than 18.

That decision, Roper v. Simmons, was based in part on international law. Noting that the United States was the only nation in the world to sanction the juvenile death penalty, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said it was appropriate to look to “the laws of other countries and to international authorities as instructive” in interpreting the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

He added that teenagers were different from older criminals — less mature, more susceptible to peer pressure and more likely to change for the better. Those findings, lawyers for the juvenile lifers say, should apply to their clients, too.

“Thirteen- and 14-year-old children should not be condemned to death in prison because there is always hope for a child,” said Bryan Stevenson, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, which represents Ms. Jones and several other juvenile lifers.

The 2005 death penalty ruling applied to 72 death-row inmates, almost precisely the same number as the 73 prisoners serving life without parole for crimes committed at 13 or 14.

The Supreme Court did not abolish the juvenile death penalty in a single stroke. The 2005 decision followed one in 1988 that held the death penalty unconstitutional for those who had committed crimes under 16.

The new lawsuits, filed in Alabama, California, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina and Wisconsin, seek to follow a similar progression.

“We’re not demanding that all these kids be released tomorrow,” Mr. Stevenson said. “I’m not even prepared to say that all of them will get to the point where they should be released. We’re asking for some review.”

In defending American policy in this area in 2006, the State Department told the United Nations that sentencing is usually a matter of state law. “As a general matter,” the department added, juvenile offenders serving life-without-parole terms “were hardened criminals who had committed gravely serious crimes.”

Human rights groups have disputed that. According to a 2005 report from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, 59 percent of the more than 2,200 prisoners serving life without parole for crimes they committed at 17 or younger had never been convicted of a previous crime. And 26 percent were in for felony murder, meaning they participated in a crime that led to a murder but did not themselves kill anyone.

The new report focuses on the youngest offenders, locating 73 juvenile lifers in 19 states who were 13 and 14 when they committed their crimes. Pennsylvania has the most, with 19, and Florida is next, with 15. In those states and Illinois, Nebraska, North Carolina and Washington, 13-year-olds have been sentenced to die in prison.

In most of the cases, the sentences were mandatory, an automatic consequence of a murder conviction after being tried as an adult.

A federal judge here will soon rule on Ms. Jones’s challenge to her sentence. Ms. Poston, who prosecuted her, said Ms. Jones was beyond redemption.

“Between the ages of 2 and 3, you develop a conscience,” Ms. Poston said. “She never got the voice that says, ‘This is bad, Ashley.’ ”

“It was a blood bath in there,” Ms. Poston said of the night of the murders here, in 1999. “Ashley Jones is not the poster child for the argument that life without parole is too long.”

In a telephone interview from the Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Ala., Ms. Jones said she did not recognize the girl who committed her crimes. According to court filings, her mother was a drug addict and her stepfather had sexually molested her. “Everybody I loved, everybody I trusted, I was betrayed by,” Ms. Jones said.

“I’m very remorseful about what happened,” she said. “I should be punished. I don’t feel like I should spend the rest of my life in prison.”

Mrs. Nalls, her grandmother, had been married for 53 years when she and her husband, Deroy Nalls, agreed to take Ashley in. She was “a problem child,” and Mr. Nalls was a tough man who took a dislike to Ashley’s boyfriend, Geramie Hart. Mr. Hart, who was 16 at the time of the murders, is also serving a life term. Mrs. Nalls said he deserved a shot at parole someday as well.

“Mass Incarceration in the United States: At What Cost?”

I encourage everyone to see this report titled, “Mass Incarceration in the United States: At What Cost?”, based on a Joint Economic Committee Hearing on Thursday, October 4, 2007. The statistics are shocking.

Education is always a good antidote, but we also need better criminal justice policies.

Go here if you'd like to listen to the actual hearing.

-Angela

"The racial composition of America’s prisons is alarming. Although African Americans
constitute 14 percent of regular drug users, they are 37 percent of those arrested for drug
offenses, and 56 percent of persons in state prisons for drug crimes. African Americans serve
nearly as much time in federal prisons for drug offenses as whites do for violent crimes.
A black male who does not finish high school now has a 60 percent chance of going to jail. One
who has finished high school has a 30 percent chance. We have reached a point where the
principal nexus between young African-American men and our society is increasingly the
criminal justice system.
Moreover, we are spending enormous amounts of money to maintain the prison system. The
combined expenditures of local, state, and federal governments for law enforcement and
corrections personnel total over $200 billion. Prison construction and operation has become
sought after, if uncertain, tools of economic growth for rural communities.
Are there ways to spend less money, enhance public safety, and make a fairer prison system?"

Hard questions are being asked because crime rates are going down at the same time that incarceration rates are going up. The problem is not more crime, but rather sentencing policies. This is worth reading.