Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Prisons & jails see continual inmate increase
By Gabbrielle Martin
The DePaulia (DePaul U.)
06/19/2006

(U-WIRE) CHICAGO — According to a May 22 article published in the Chicago Tribune, the number of inmates in jails and prisons increased at a rate of 1,000 per week in 2005. This means that about 2.2 million, or one out of every 136 persons in the U.S., were sent to jail last summer.

A government report revealed that over 56,000 people were imprisoned in the summer of 2004. This demonstrates an increase of close to three percent between June 2004 and June 2005. This calculates to a weekly inmate intake of 1,085.

Allan Beck, Chief of Corrections statistics for the Justice Department, stated that this inmate increase is the largest increase (33,539) since 1997. This is a growth rate that is close to five percent referring to state and federal jails, and inmates in state and federal prisons account for an increase of 1.6 percent.

Andrea Lyon, Director of DePaul's Center for Captial Cases and an attorney, says there is an increase in inmate population because crimes are judged more harshly today. "Because everything is criminalized and everything is political — what was once a felony is now considered a misdemeanor," said Lyon.

Lyon supports the idea that the majority of prisoners are not criminals. Sixty-two percent of all inmates have not been convicted because jails and prisons are used as holding facilities. Judges are reluctant about releasing prisoners before a trial, because of the risk of flight. Lyon explained that, from a political standpoint, it looks good for politicians who are up for election if there is an increase in the number of prisoners. The increase in the number of prisoners provides political constituents with a false sense of security. She said that neither the increase in the number of inmates nor the extreme sentencing served to improve the existing problems. The reason for this, she asserts, is that it does not foster improvement because crime might be repeated. She gave a hypothetical scenario of 10 men on 10 different street corners all picked up for drug possession and put in prison on the same day. The very next day there are 10 new men occupying those same corners. She also emphasized that it would be cheaper to treat someone for drug addition than to spend millions of dollars on incarceration.

The article mentioned that southern states with a larger minority base tended to have more prisoners than states in the northeast region of the country. "The reason for high minority imprisonment has several factors: economic, educational disparity, limited resources, unequal policing and the fact that many minorities are of the victims and perpetrators of crime," Lyon said.

[ Back to Student Voices ]