Prison Reform D1

The US prison system is bloated; we spend a huge amount of money to keep a large % of our population in prison. According to a mid 2008 census, 760 out of 100,000 in the US are in prison. This may not seem like a lot until you realize that this is the highest rate in the world. St. Kitts and Nevis have the second highest rate in the world (as of Oct 2008) with 660. Russia, the third highest is at only 624 per 100,000. China and India, the two countries larger than ours have 119 and 33 respectively.

But the astonishing facts continue. Not only do we have the highest prison population rate in the world, but we have the largest prison population too! We have over 2.3 million people in prison. That’s nearly one million more than second place, which is China at 1.57 million people. The numbers drop off sharply from there to 880 thousand (Russia) and 470 thousand (Brazil). To look at it another way, China has more than four times the population of the US, but has 68% of the US’ prison population.

The 2009 DoJ budget request was for $25.36 billion.

Sources:
Prison Population
US DoJ