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I'm surprised to see there is no section on the history of incarceration in the United States. Why is this?
I think it would be beneficial to have a section that details the historical/sociological evolution of the U.S. prison system. It's not unprecedented: Foucault wrote broadly about the birth and development of the prison, and Oxford put out a book called The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society. These books include some details on the American system, though they are largely based on the European cases. It would make sense to have a section on history, including details such as the first prison/jail in the U.S./colonies, the way prisons evolved and grew through U.S. history (including structures and security, management, type of inmates, mission of the institution - punishment, reformation, correction, rehabilitation, detention, etc. - and major events in U.S. prison history such as the creation of the Federal Bureau of Prisons or any prison-related legislation.
While this material has the potential to make the article too long overall, I cannot currently find a wikipedia article that has such information on the U.S. system. These are details that should not be overlooked. 76.15.31.146 ( talk) 20:47, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
New to this article. Didn't want to just throw it in there but the new figure for county and local jail pop as of June 2009 is 767,000, bureau of Justice statistics as quoted in USA Today 4 June 2010. Student7 ( talk) 15:54, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Why is this page focused on blacks vs. whites, hispanics, etc. And under the 'Race' subtitle, you only focused on the black population in prisons, but no other race. I think you need to rethink a more proactive way to do this page over rather than singling out specific race groups. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.227.156.201 ( talk) 15:19, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
I do watch probably too much tv. but i cannot say that irrespectfuly too myself as i work full time .. but what i do see is incredible in all walks of life..
Can i just say one thing that i
have suggestion with....!!!! people can cahange.. as we all know!! and there are people who cannot!!but i think if people can relate to music then maybe we and you will have something in prisons... maybe have channnels of music that can distract people from their problems, im not sure but i do watch... and i do think a lot, music is a release.. maybe im behind the times!! maybe you have tried this and maybe i have not seen enough!! just a suggestion.. music to the individual i think important as long as it is calming or dancing in a nice way may assist in their ability to communicate in another language, music can translate in many ways ... i think prisons would benefit from having more music!!!! Just a thoughtful human hope all prisoners have a hope!! And i hope all prison guards are safe!!
I do watch probably too much tv. but i cannot say that irrespectfuly too myself as i work full time .. but what i do see is incredible in all walks of life..
Can i just say one thing that i
have suggestion with....!!!! people can cahange.. as we all know!! and there are people who cannot!!but i think if people can relate to music then maybe you will have something in prisons... maybe have channnels of music that can distract people, im not sure but i do watch... and i do think a lot, music is a release.. maybe im behind the times!! maybe you have tried this and maybe i have not seen enough!! just a suggestion.. music to the individual as long as it is calming or dancing in a nice way may assist in their ability to communicate in another language, music can translate in many ways ... i think prisons would benefit from having more music!!!! Just a thoughtful human hope all prisoners have a hope!! And i hope all prison guards are safe!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.241.69.50 ( talk) 14:27, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
Seem like on high-resolution screens the pictures was messed up. I tried to re-arrange them, and I hope I did not lose any information. When moving pictures around try to change size of the web browser window to make sure it still looks good on different screen sizes. Great article, great pictures! Innab ( talk) 22:24, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
The chart is from here:
I believe violent crime also dropped in Canada, and it does not have the same large increase in the rate of incarceration.
The chart is original research for this article. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 17:36, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
(unindent) Yes, exactly. People seem to be interpreting the chart in 2 completely opposite ways. Some people believe the huge increase in the incarceration rate in the US caused the lower violent crime rate.
Others can point to the chart and say that there is no good reason for a huge surge in the rate of incarceration. I believe it has been shown in studies that the death penalty, the harshest punishment in many people's eyes, does not lower murder rates.
Here is something that might be added to the info around the chart:
American Exception. Inmate Count in US Dwarfs Other Nations'. New York Times. Apr 22, 2008. Page 1, Section A, Front Page. http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v08/n417/a04.html
From the New York Times article (emphasis added):
Still, it is the length of sentences that truly distinguishes American prison policy. Indeed, the mere number of sentences imposed here would not place the United States at the top of the incarceration lists. If lists were compiled based on annual admissions to prison per capita, several European countries would outpace the United States. But American prison stays are much longer, so the total incarceration rate is higher. ... "Rises and falls in Canada's crime rate have closely paralleled America's for 40 years," Mr. Tonry wrote last year. "But its imprisonment rate has remained stable." |
References for the opposite view, and other views could be added too. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 00:20, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Why is this article completely sex/gender neutral when the overwhelming majority of people incarcerated are males? There are sections related to age and race but not one on sex. A quick google search showed "(2007 - prison inmates by race, sex and age) "Of the 2.3 million inmates in custody, 2.1 million were men and 208,300 were women (table 9)." Or 91% of all adults in prison are men.
Contrary to the edit summary removing it, this section is important. The impact of race on the enforcement of US criminal laws, as well as disproportionate sentencing, is very well-established and documented with terms like "Driving While Black" (DWB) in popular vernacular. The section is not well sourced and I can't speak to the exact stats in it but the solution to those issues is not to remove the section altogether, but rather to tag it for improvement (or just improve it, it's not like this information is not readily available online and trivially sourced if that's your beef with it.)-- Cybermud ( talk) 05:14, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
The facts and figures for incarceration usually omit temporary incarceration in the form of arrests, so the information only shows how many are incarcerated NOW, and not how many HAVE BEEN at some point. Since 1 in 3 men age 18 to 29 have been arrested, which would be an unbelievable figure if it weren't so well documented, I think it's very important to devote a substantial portion of this article to that "indicator" of the universality of incarceration. It's as, or more common than things like baldness, freckles, blue eyes, etc.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120018806/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
"being arrested is a relatively common experience for young adults: nearly one-quarter of the entire cohort and one-third of the males in the cohort were arrested at least once."
Note that the 1 in 3 figure is conservative. It excludes juvenile arrests and arrestes after age 30 and above. It also doesn't appear to include "detainments" for interrogation, immigration, etc, which can be indistinguishable from a long prison sentence in many cases.
Qwasty ( talk) 23:31, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
Reading the current version of the article, the section on youth incarceration occupies between a third and a half of the entire article, and cuts the Table of Contents in two, distracting from the more general description of the system. Perhaps it should be split off into a separate article, with a synopsis and a Main Article link leading to it? Failing that, the subheadings should be downgraded; we don't really need ToC entries for 9.4.1 and 9.4.1.1-9.4.1.5. It won't shorten the article, but at least the ToC won't be cluttered with unnecessary links. ShadowRangerRIT ( talk) 15:40, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
Hey, this article appears to be only anti-incarceration. Reasons for incarceration are not discussed. As it stands it probably needs the NOPOV tag. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.105.44.77 ( talk) 05:24, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm reverting I.P.68.105.44.77's edit. California's Three Strikes Law IS infamous to poor minorities.
--NBahn (
talk) 06:28, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
This article is not fairly neutral. While the first few sections are fine, the later sections are almost all anti-incarceration, specifically the sections ShadowRangerRIT mentioned. I agree it would help the POV issues if the Youth Incarceration section was spun into its own article (although that article would be immediately labeled POV unless changes were made).
Below are the major issues which must be addressed for the article to present a neutral point of view:
Anyway, please do not remove the NPOV tag until these issues are addressed. I'll also see if I can dig up some information to address these issues. -- SouthernNights ( talk) 14:07, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Good job on the split. This definitely fixes the NPOV problems. Thanks for doing it.-- SouthernNights ( talk) 16:10, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
We cannot have a "criticism" section by itself. The criticism in the article needs to be worked in throughout the article. Having a "criticism" section is bad writing. WhisperToMe ( talk) 07:38, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
Entry section 2nd Paragraph is extremely biased (sensational statement). It doesn't demonstrate the complexity of offenders (inmates or prisoners) that are housed in Supermax Security prisons in contrast to minimum security. This paragraph needs specific and accurate data.
In the United States, prisons are operated at various levels of security, ranging from minimum-security prisons that mainly house non-violent offenders to Supermax facilities that house well-known criminals and terrorists such as Terry Nichols, Theodore Kaczynski, Eric Rudolph, Zacarias Moussaoui, and Richard Reid. --
...plus the following section should be removed, or be written in the context of a new section dedicated exclusively to popular historical delinquents that have been idealized or whom have become sensational subjects of examination.
...well-known criminals and terrorists such as Terry Nichols, Theodore Kaczynski, Eric Rudolph, Zacarias Moussaoui, and Richard Reid. --
18.150.7.94 ( talk) 13:39, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
I was just wondering about the table inserted as a GIF image. Why? This data could easily be entered as a Wiki table and would be more readable.
-- Mcorazao ( talk) 14:53, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
I did so because of a combination of two reasons:
Why do none of the charts and graphs show the distribution of prisoners by race, e.g. http://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/ ? 99.27.201.226 ( talk) 16:59, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
I believe there was formerly a section dedicated to that matter. Somebody must have gone and deleted the whole section on race, class, and minorities without going through the appropriate channels such as opening it up for debate on the Talk Page.
76.15.31.146 (
talk) 20:51, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
Just wondering... if the us population is 300 million and the prison population is 7 million, then why does it say that 1 in 100 adults are in prison?? shouldng it say 1 in 43 people?? or 1 IN 27 ADULTS? (adults make up 63% of the population, out of 300 million people of which 7 million are incarcerated) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.235.85.1 ( talk) 19:05, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
This article drips with a particular POV - it needs to be discarded and written by someone else. While I more or less agree with this particular POV, it has no place here. The statistics and counts and international comparisons are scary enough, they can and should be presented in a neutral manner. People can come to thier own conclusions.
The viewpoint of this article is actually quite "conservative" as is the media in general. How can a corporate media driven by profit be otherwise? Why should we make these facts seem less "scary"? Why condone the atrocities of our own government? It may not be politically correct to criticize the government, but where has being P.C. gotten us? Let's wake up and start rocking the boat. Otherwise you may be the next victim of the "justice" system.
The facts demonstrate that the reality is actually much worse than you think!
"The U.S. now locks up its citizens at a rate 5-8 times that of the industrialized nations to which we are most similar, Canada and Western Europe," said Marc Mauer, Assistant Director of The Sentencing Project, a non-profit criminal justice research and advocacy group.
"While Canada imprisons 116 people out of every 100,000 in the country, the U.S. locks up 702 people per 100,000."
While I concur that being politically correct is not entirely important, especially as it is a POV itself, I must say that finding reliable info about this subject that isn't biased has been hard. Statistics can be very misleading. Such as my personal fav, '5 out of 3 Americans can't do fractions.' How does one determine what is biased and what isn't on the internet? No solution for SF yet. Tell me on
Talk:Sagittarius Flame if you have any ideas how to better research this topic w/o getting all stuck in a library. 21:16, 1 November 2006 (UTC)Sagittarius Flame
The section about supermax prisons says that television privileges in the ADX prison are "virtually non-existent", but then further down it describes each cell as containing a "13-inch black and white television". What are those televisions for if television privileges are so rare? -- 209.108.217.226 18:02, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
Those televisions are used for the same purpose they serve in the general population. They are the opiate of the masses.
I spent five years working in the ADX. The article concerning the ADX is wrong on several issues. All cells have televisions. The inmates get only local stations and an institutional channel. All cells have windows. You can not see the sky from the windows, only dead space. All cells have showers in them. Recreation is done in groups of 5 to 10 based on population. The unit yards are big enough to have two full basketball courts and a hand ball court. The rec. yard that the article mentions does exist. It is used for inmates who for what ever reason cannot have recreation with their fellow inmates. The cells are not sound proof. It has been my experience that inmates at the ADX are there for a reason.
This section seems POV, or at least poorly written. E.g.:
"This overcrowding problem was caused by the War On Drugs of the 1980s."
No NPOV source is cited for this. From the information in this article, only coincidence can be inferred; causality is not shown. If someone has sources to support this claim, please reference them. Otherwise, this section should be removed or edited. --- blahpers 02:29, 2004 Nov 5 (UTC)
Some observers have gone so far as to accuse the United States of deliberately developing the legal system and the prison industry as a means of social control beyond that normally associated with criminal justice.
there are many inaccuracies and over-generalizations in this article, such as all of the info in the Maximum Security section, to begin with.
and
"Now, whenever a new prisoner is incarcerated, a criminal must be released to satisfy the fire code requirement. Consequently, prisoners of all kinds are let out of prison early."
this implies a stable prison population, implies that prisoners are not kept 8 to a 6-man cell, implies that prisons are not doubling capacity by simply adding a second bed to one-man cells, implies new prisons are not being built, when in fact,
the population is constantly growing, prisoners are NOT let out without regard to what crime they were convicted of, prison overcrowding is rampant, with inmates housed in overcapacity situations, put into prison gymnasiums and on rooftops, prisons with one man cells are doubling capacity by adding beds, and prison construction is at an all-time high and increasing yearly.
What are the sources for the data? Just that one book referenced in the article? Pedant 02:10, 2004 Nov 12 (UTC)
I agree with the posting above. Prison population in the U.S. has consistently risen in recent history [1]. Prisoners are often double-bunked, contrary to what the current entry says [2].
Here is an article that would corroborate the assertion that the War on Drugs is responsible for the increase in prison population in the U.S. [3].
eappleton 08:43, 2004 Nov 12 (UTC)
All this stuff about large percentages of inmates being for non-violent offenses needs to be worked on - Statistics lie and everyone knows it. It's extremely common for violent criminals to be convicted of "non-violent" drug crimes because often those are the easiest crimes to prove. Often, victims and witnesses are violent crimes are afraid to come forward, or are threatened and intimidated by defendants and their friends. Drug cases are much easier to prove because they usually involve undercover police officers who are much less likely to be threatened or intimidated. Tufflaw 01:46, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)
I don not know enough about the prison system to question the accuracy of this article, though some of its assertions seem ludicrous. But this article has been written in a very biased manner, something which is clear throughout.
My reading of this article is that most of it is in line with current criminological and sociological thought. I belive is article is in need of better citations, but as a whole, those who disagree with the facts presented should specify which individual facts they have a problem with, and we can deal with the issues individually.
I will stay out of the POV/NPOV debate, but I will say this is a very short article. It can't be left for months tagged as POV without anyone offering any changes. I would encourage people to be bold and edit the page as they see fit. Robneild 08:55, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
This article is warped by its manifest bias. An article purported about "prisons in the US" would be reasonable expected to focus on the prisons themselves: the various security levels, notable facilities, historical development, conditions for prisoners, impact on popular culture, etc. To have the article kick off with a discussion of the incarceration rate is absurd, and clearly motivated by the author's opinion that the rate is too high. This rant belongs in a discussion of the criminal justice system, not an aticle about prisons.
Sorry I don't have time to edit this article myself, but the bias accusation is valid, and the POV tag should be removed only when the article is NPOV, not because a timer has expired. Jeffr 14:08, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
Jay Drew —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
205.132.248.64 (
talk) 17:18, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
According to [4], there is no information for 17 countries. This alone is enough to count as a "few" countries. Furthermore, only a handful, if *any*, are likely to have a higher incarceration rate than the US.
The initial sentence as stands, as Tufflaw reverts to, is quite simply misleading and inaccurate. The qualifier is barely justified (as indeed it may be the case that none of the 17 countries have higher incarceration rate). Certainly adding "few" is quite important if the qualifier is there at all.
zoney ♣ talk 30 June 2005 23:29 (UTC)
I think we may safely assume that countries not reporting statistics, or reporting underestimated statistics, are authoritarian regimes, or are poor, disorganized etc. and do not have the means to support appropriate statistic gathering. Thus, we may accurately state that the US is the developed country with the highest incarceration rate. David.Monniaux 06:57, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Could someone add some information about the structure of the US Prison system, the differences between Federal, State and County prisons and how they relate to their respective justice systems? -- BadSeed 20:32, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
Removed "(the U.S. prison pop) is around 22% of the total world prison population" for all of the reasons noted in talk. Without accurate data for various countries the assertion is specious. Prison lists nine million incarcerated worldwide--North Korea alone would almost certainly take this up 5-10%. Make a guesstimate from [5]. Marskell 11:16, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
What an unsalvageable mess. I would support deleting this just so we can be cleansed; maybe, then, we can start fresh.
Lotsofissues 19:26, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
We should just rework this entire mess, and delete unnecessary things as needed.
Mulder416 3:01, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
As an onlooker, just removing huge chunks does not seem to be the answer since it just makes it harder to understand. I shall revert, but someone may remove my edits should they see fit - but I ask you all strongly consider rewriting (on a test page?) BEFORE you remove stuff, no matter how small the replacement may be, something I feel is needed in its place. By all means strip the article, just don't destroy what slight knowledge is currently in place. Ian 13ID:540053 20:11, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
Dispite knowing nothing about the subject, I have cleaned up the article alittle, generally to make it NPOV and make sence. I have also added footnote references whereever possible to show statistic sources. Should be a good base for some expansion now :) Enjoy and good luck! Ian 13ID:540053 10:35, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
I see in the article "As of 2003, the incarceration rate in the United States was 482 per 100,000 residents" but looking at the U.S. Department of Justice PDFs that seems to exclude various groups like juveniles? Is this usual? It goes on to say the total rate is 701 per 100,000 in 2002. Robneild 23:38, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
See Talk:Bubba. - 70.109.72.185 23:32, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
This article needs to be totally overhauled, and brought into compliance with NPOV. Being in the law enforcement field, I can tell you that there is no possible way to arrive at many of the statistics that are mentioned. I vote to just remove this article all together, or NUKE it and start from scratch. Johnppd24 15:41, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
So far, I've moved a few things from the beginning to alleviate some of the worst symptoms. An intro sentence has been added to the Comparison w/ other countries section and I moved a paragraph from the beginning that fit in better with the criticism than with the beginning of this article. I did this because the beginning of this article used to sound a lot more POV than acceptable. A total overhaul was a bit impractical. Let's work with what we have and chop out the bad fat of this article. 21:08, 31 October 2006 (UTC)Sagittarius Flame see Talk:Sagittarius Flame to comment directly.
Well, I've done a bit more grammatical work and axed a few less-than-NPOV statements and questionable ones as well. Please cite sources if you revert anything you've done to my edits and/or see Talk:Sagitttarius Flame to comment directly on any edits I've done. 21:03, 1 November 2006 (UTC)Sagittarius Flame
The prison system in the United States and everyone that interacts with it is part of a closed society from which it is practically impossible, perhaps completely impossible, to obtain neutral data. For instance, the news media report facts that are usually not factual but politically motivated interpretations of random information. The court system reports information that is colored by its motivation to reduce workload. The police report information that has been adjusted to improve their working conditions, increase pay, and reduce their exposure to lawsuits. In many states, the county sheriffs department runs county prisons and they report their own point-of-view. The state prison systems are usually run by political appointees and their staff report information from their perspective. The federal government, with its prisons, reports only what they feel the people “need to know.” Other information is kept secret. With all those points-of-view about the prison systems, it is unlikely that there is a neutral point of view unless the article degenerates to a road map of where prisons are, rather than what they are.
With this in mind, I think that fixing the article simply requires better sourcing. For instance, when one reports that some prison uses psychotropic drugs to control its population, the information needs to be sited, at last as “According to the California Department of Metal Health, in their May, 2005 article on prison population…” Even if the California Department of Mental Health is wrong, and publishing blatant falsehoods, the article remains correct because the article is not required to determine truth, only to properly reference information. You certainly know that there is often a large gap between information and truth. If you want the truth, you will never be able to publish an article about prisons for the reasons cited in my first paragraph. Moreover, whatever you may have heard about prisons --- it is much worse than anybody would dare report. The correctional industry attracts workers who are deviates from the normal kind of person. These persons have their own point-of-view, which so filters (corrupts) information that normal people really do not know how to interpret it! -- LymanSchool 16:45, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I tried to rewrite a lot to be grammatically correct and more politically correct. I tried to get rid of the weasel words as well. Of course, it can always be reverted, but I think this goes a long ways towards fixing it up. Cheers -- LymanSchool 21:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
In the section entitled 'Comparison With Other Countries' the article states "the U.S. rate is three to eight times that of the Western European nations". What constitutes 'Western Europe'? The Czech Republic for example? It is further west than Finland. The countries of Europe have massively different incarceration rates and in my opinion it makes no sense to talk about a GEOGRAPHICAL area like Europe when comparing cultural/social issues. It is like comparing incarceration rates between the northern and southern hemispheres. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.9.138.200 ( talk) 08:53, 8 April 2007 (UTC).
Whoever wrote the statistics part completely misread the USDOJ site. The numbers are for 2005 and the 1.4 million figure applies only to incarcerated women. It's written in plain English there, so I'm not sure how anybody got their signals crossed, but the size of the US prison population is a pretty hot topic so people might want to not completely mess up the statistics. Anybody who wants to correct it can feel free to; the USDOJ site that those numbers were taken from is here: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm. This is why Wikipedia isn't respected--it isn't even copied properly from primary sources. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.108.65.16 ( talk) 15:00, 29 April 2007 (UTC).
I must be missing something, because the first two highlights on BJS page you referenced don't jive. With a total of 2,245,189 prisoners, the US population would have to be in excess of 450,000,000 to account for only 497 per 100,000 residents. Dividing total # of prisoners by total population gives more like 750 prisoners per 100,000 residents. Does the 2.2M include, and the 497 per 100,000 exclude, inmates not convicted, i.e., those being held over for trial or arraignment? The difference is roughly 750,000, which seems ridiculously high, even considering how backlogged the courts are. Someone please enlighten me.
They make up 27% of the prison population in the United States. I'm adding this to the article. -- Rotten 23:23, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
I've reverted edit by 72.69.77.177 - big NPOV issues with the paragraph they have added plus no citation. Will-h 15:16, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
The only source I can find for the 22% is the world socialist website, with no backup whatsoever. Further, the citation is to an MSN article which DOES NOT say the same thing. I removed the statistic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.81.111.246 ( talk) 19:06, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Are there any corelations between the prison populations and the politics of the locality? For example, are right wing states likely to have more prisoners? Are there any studies relating to this subject? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.105.134.113 ( talk) 18:50, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Footnotes 7 and 8 are dead links. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.117.151.10 ( talk) 13:23, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
I have done so because:
"According to DoJ incarceration rate in the US is 509 prisoners per 100,000 ppl
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm". This comes to about one-half of one percent (0.5% or 0.005) while there is an uncited line in the introduction that comes to about one percent (1% or 0.01). So what should be done about this?
--NBahn (
talk) 06:27, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
why is united states so fucking blind about prisons seames to me your fucking clueless why not fit crime with punshmite ive been in the system and have been a member of society you have failed the system because your clueless about life in general you or anyone has any clue about how life is after prison yes some prisoners have no bussines beeing on the but some do dont pas judgment on every person`
Europe treats drug addicts rather than incarcerating them. They view it as a medical problem rather than a criminal problem. Holland's decades of experience shows that treatment of drug abuse is vastly cheaper than our alternative. We also have the highest rate of gun-related homicides of all industrialized nations. These two distinctions could account for a large difference in the prison populations between the U.S. and Europe. See "How They Do It Better" in U.S. News & World Report 3/18/07. Nevada10 ( talk) 06:24, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
There have been no links between access to guns and total crime rate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.96.94.170 ( talk) 15:56, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
The high figure of juvenile incarceration may seem troublesome to an outsider or layperson. However, it should be noted that a significant majority of these juvenile offenders are not "Bobby down the street who goes to middle school with your kid." Many of them are hard core gang members who commit murder, armed robbery, and rape. These 13 to 17 year old males are terrorizing their neighborhoods with violent crimes. Psychologically and emotionally they are already damaged goods for they come from homes that are either dysfunctional or mom and dad (if he is around) spend all their time working to make ends meet. Consequently, there is no supervision at home and very little time for nurture. This breeds generations of damaged human beings. By the time they have been popped for their first robbery or murder there is no turning back (for most of them). What is the state to do? Let them be to kill and destroy additional lives and families? Or incarcerate in order to protect society at large?
Articles who spin these incarceration figures into a story of "boo-hoo-ing" for all these poor prisoners seem to forget that somewhere along the path there was a victim - who in the worst case scenario is no longer living whose family shall forever live with that loss or a woman who will never recover emotionally from a brutal sexual violation. Where is the compassion for those Americans? Where are the bleeding hearts for the oftentimes poor, hard working, voiceless, minority Americans who leave in constant fear of these predators? Toosbuy ( talk) 12:48, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
Reference #45, ^ Holman and Zeiderberg, 2001, p. 8, implies that there is a complete citation earlier in the list of references. I couldn't find one .....
There are several other examples of this particular reference past # 45.
Best,
Rosmoran ( talk) 12:13, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
The second line of the article currently reads "According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 2,266,800 adults were incarcerated in U.S. federal and state prisons, and county jails at year-end 2011 – about 0.7% of adults in the U.S. resident population.". However 2,266,800 is approximately 0.7% of the _total_ US population (314 million). So unless I'm missing something, this line should be edited by removing the word 'adult' or, preferably, by changing the 0.7% number into its correct value. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 145.97.225.76 ( talk) 17:20, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
Fixed: https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Incarceration_in_the_United_States&oldid=600094662 — TJJFV ( talk) 01:09, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
One chart shows incarceration at 750 or so per 100,000 population. This seems okay. Another shows 5,000 per 100,000 of blacks (5%). This seems okay. Hispanics at 2,000 per 100,000 of Hispanics. This seems high, but okay. But the ethnicity chart appears to show white incarceration at nearly 900 or so per 100,000. Somebody has to be under 750 in order for the charts to "average out." Not everyone can be incarcerated over the average value. Some group must be incarcerated less! Student7 ( talk) 17:14, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
The usual rates are shown: so many whites in the general population, so many blacks, with many higher percentages of the latter in jail. What we are not seeing, and I am pretty sure there are credible statistics, is out of how many accused people, white and black, wind up in jail. If the accused white people were getting a walk, while blacks (only) served time, this would clearly demonstrate a judicial bias against blacks. I have the feeling that this is not true, though. Student7 ( talk) 21:01, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
(unindent). It is a complex subject. There are already articles on the topic. See:
There is only room for a summary of opinions here, and any summary is bound to be incomplete, wrong, or lacking in some way. Wikipedia usually just links to the other articles in this case. Everything other than statistics can go to those articles where the topics can be covered in a much more complete and nuanced way that follows WP:NPOV guidelines. All significant viewpoints can be represented and referenced.
Here is the info you added, Student7:
Various studies have shown that, in recent decades, there has not been disparity in black vs white crime statistics in black-run vs white-controlled cities, say Atlanta vs San Diego. In the largest counties, the rates of conviction for accused blacks was slightly less than the conviction rates for whites, for example.
Stephan Thernstrom (2011-03-29).
"America in black and white: one nation indivisible". p. 273. |
I moved the info to the ethnicity section. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 21:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
The tag has been erased which stated that nothing was there to document that blacks are accused of crimes at a much higher rate than whites (are convicted less, which was a surprise) but still wind up in jail at higher rates. And this occurs in black-run cities in the same proportion as white-run ones. If there is a statement that documents this, I missed it. Can the editor provide me a ptr to that information? or the text itself? Student7 ( talk) 12:39, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Comparing the rates for this country to those of others is fairly irrelevant. Most countries have relatively homogeneous populations, by comparison, and an often commonly accepted, or understood, manner of behavior. They have different laws, some of which are pre-emptive for crime, considered a violation of "rights" in the US.
There needs to be an npov reason for selecting those particular nations for comparison. Because they speak English, is probably not valid, and therefore WP:OR no matter who did it. There needs to be a penitential reason for their selection. Student7 ( talk) 13:01, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
What's wrong with including them in the body of the text? The npov reason is that they are comparably developed OECD countries. The issue isn't heterogeneity of population, or "commonly accepted manners of behavior," for goodness sake, it's that it's US policy to incarcerate people more, irrespective of crime rates. Sorry if reality has a pov. Meesher ( talk) 20:59, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
To Whom it May Concern:
I am a student in at Amherst College and I am currently taking a class called "Women History in America: 1865 to the Present". Our final project is to choose a wikipedia article and bolster the information provided. In order to be respectful of the other editors of this page, I want to explain the changes that I intend to make in case there are any concerns.
Historically, research and knowledge of the criminal justice system has been based upon a male paradigm, which inevitably fails to address the specific needs of female inmates. I believe it is crucial to explore the ways in which women’s experiences both coincide with and differ from those of their male counterparts, especially since the growth rate of female incarceration is rapidly increasing. First of all, I propose to add a section on substance abuse and the lack of treatment available for inmates to break free of their addictions. Inadequate health care serves as another main concern. Prison's lack qualified medical personnel and resources to meet the physical and mental health needs of inmates and more specifically, women's specific needs related to reproduction, mental health, and feminine care are particularly grave and remain unaddressed. Moreover, the female experience in regard to pregnancy and childbirth conflicts with a prison system originally designed for men. I also believe it is important to have a section on sexual abuse- a significant threat for female inmates. There are alarming rates of sexual aggression in prisons; however, even the Prison Rape Elimination Act signed into law in 2003, is focused mainly on sexual misconduct in male prisons rather than also in female correctional facilities.
While the previous issues I have raised focus specifically on experience in prison, I will also include two sections on what happens after prison by examining barriers to entry and effects on family structures. As they reenter their communities, former inmates confront sparse job opportunities, limited options for affordable housing, and the challenge of reestablishing relationships. Thus, the transition from prison to home is difficult and rates of recidivism remain high. In terms of effects on family structures, I would like to look at the way single parents remain especially vulnerable to the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, which seems to expedite the process of terminating parental rights. In addition, incarcerated parents confront major difficulties with maintaining contact with their children. Obstacles that inhibit contact between mothers and their children include geographical distance, lack of transportation, lack of privacy, inability to cover travel expenses and the inappropriate environments of correctional facilities. It is also a huge issue when single mothers are incarcerated because they are much more likely to lose their children to the State.
Each of my changes will be corroborated with facts and citations in order to ensure my information is credible and reliable. I believe that the changes I intend to make are extremely important in order to strengthen this article and make it more holistic and detailed.
Thank you very much. I look forward to hearing your feedback. Sincerely, Dancing Dolphin — Preceding unsigned comment added by DancingDolphin3 ( talk • contribs) 23:11, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't have a solution (sorry), but we have way more subsections than we should have for readability. Some should be included together somehow. I will think about it and hope you will too! Student7 ( talk) 14:07, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
We don't really want to see 50 plus states and territories penal groups listed by name. These will need to be summarized in some terse fashion. Student7 ( talk) 12:01, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
I see a lot of editing of that section yesterday. I don't keep up with it, and it looks like it is becoming propaganda-filled. I suggest jettisoning all of that section except for stats of private versus public prisons. The rest can go to the talk page for the "see also" article that is linked:
I don't intend to edit that section of this article. Much of this article is not being watched much if at all. The "see also" articles are better watched through their watchlists that are specific to those articles. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 18:47, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
This section has NPOV issues, a number of unsourced assertions, plus it's all predicated on one source- a study of privatization based on the tiny data sample of three prisons. Needs revising with better sources. Plausible deniability ( talk) 23:12, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
That the general population of the prisons are less educated has been touched upon in various sentences, but no real statistics. They are probably available somewhere.
A second demographic that may be missing is "poverty," or poverty-background, a bit harder to construct. Student7 ( talk) 13:09, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Another demographic that could be covered is religious background. Eav ( talk) 22:33, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
This image needs to show the increase in general population level of the United States alongside the prison population in a single image to give a more accurate view and show how much the percentage of those incarcaretated has gone up. At the moment there is no real context. - 90.219.249.36 ( talk) 13:12, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
A phrase reads "According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) 7,225,800 people at yearend 2009 were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole". It seems to me that there is a heck of a lot of difference being in jail or prison and being on probation or parole. I can appreciate that these statistics ought to be somewhere. Just not in an article on incarceration which hardly has the relative freedom that parole or probation have. Lumping them altogether is non- WP:TOPIC. Student7 ( talk) 20:00, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
It may not be a fallacy but what we used to call apples and oranges. This sentence could be clarified "According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) 7,225,800 people at yearend 2009 were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole — about 3.1% of adults in the U.S. resident population.[7][4] 2,292,133 were incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails at year end 2009.[1][3][7][4]" to show if the 2.3 million are all adults or not and then it would go better with the first sentence in the paragraph. That's a classic problem with statistics and with price comparisons (my field of expertise for a&o sitations). 4.249.63.53 ( talk) 15:29, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
There were redundant listings for "see also." The intent of this subsection is to refer the reader to articles neglected, because they didn't fit into the article. For example, in "Persecution of Hindus", a "See also" subsection might link to "Persecution of Buddhists." There was no reason to include the latter in the article. But the intent was not to be a summary of all the links in the article. In fairness, some of these links have been in the "see also" subsection historically and recently placed into links. Anyway, they are gone now. Student7 ( talk) 23:18, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
A quote says (in part): "... "Some states exclude certain items when reporting corrections expenditures. Twenty-one states wholly or partially excluded juvenile delinquency counseling from their corrections figures .... Seventeen states wholly or partially excluded spending on drug abuse rehabilitation centers.."
Of course this is what we want for this article. The reverse should be reported for this article. "This includes non-incarcertion figures" for the majority (29) of the states! I realize it may be hard to help, but including non-incarceration figures is non- WP:TOPIC. On the other hand, we would probably want to count juvenile institutions and criminally insane for this article. Can't cherry pick the announcement. Really need a better quote. I rather shows that this source is biased, IMO. Student7 ( talk) 23:15, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
Yet, the article reads:
By comparison the incarceration rate in England and Wales[clarification needed] in February 2011 was 154 people imprisoned per 100,000 residents
There is a time to mince ones words, and that statement is absolute horses**t. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.101.194.102 ( talk) 17:20, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
"Since most DOCs already post inmate information on their websites, critics claim this is a moot point. " I am unable to figure out what "this" refers to in the sentence above from the Correspondence section. Could someone who understands what is meant please improve the phrasing? Girlgeek z ( talk) 14:19, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
The numbers go back and forth and this is clearly a distortion, as many sources say the opposite. Clearly, someone is pushing a singular POV here and citing sources that promote their own POV. Viriditas ( talk) 02:27, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
Sorry to remove the new chart, but this is the same chart as we already have below, based on same report (i.e. "Sourcebook of criminal justice statistics 2003"). But in the new chart the header is misleading, because this is not all incarcerated Americans, but only the portion under state and federal jurisdiction. This does not include local jails, transit, out to court etc. See explanation of the difference between "number of prisoners in custody" and the "number under jurisdiction" in "Correctional Population in the United States, 2010. See pg.2 - http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus10.pdf :
BJS’s official measure of the prison population is the count of prisoners under the jurisdiction or legal authority of state and federal adult correctional officials (1,605,127 in 2010) (appendix table 1). These prisoners may be held in prison or jail facilities located outside of the state or federal prison system. The prison population reported in table 1 is the number held in custody or physically housed in state (1,311,136 in 2010) and federal (206,968 in 2010) adult correctional facilities, regardless of which entity has legal authority over the prisoners (appendix table 2). This includes state and federal prisoners held in privately operated facilities. The difference between the number of prisoners in custody and the number under jurisdiction is the number of state and federal prisoners held in the custody of local jails, inmates out to court, and those in transit.
Innab ( talk) 18:53, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
A quote now appears: "In the past two decades, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education. In 2011, California spent $9.6 billion on prisons, versus $5.7 billion on higher education..... The state spends $8,667 per student per year. It spends about $50,000 per inmate per year. Why is this happening? Prisons are a big business. Most are privately run. They have powerful lobbyists and they have bought most state politicians. Meanwhile, we are bankrupting out states and creating a vast underclass of prisoners who will never be equipped for productive lives. [98]"
I edited out with .... the supposed fact that California "only" (usually a key phase before a pov statement) one university and build a lot more prisons. It is not imperative that we use pov phrases from otherwise quotable references.
But I am not sure that even the remainder should be used. It certainly shouldn't be in a box. It may be counting capital expenditures on prisons versus operating expenses on higher education, which makes no sense. BTW, it is not apparent that making the comparisons between prisons and education is npov anyway. It's like saying that we spend more on abortion each year than we do on alleviating Lou Gehrig's disease. That might be true, but it is irrelevant to the argument. It is plainly political and virtually useless in an encyclopedia.
Also, it makes some of the rest of the article incoherent since it talks about overcrowding in prisons. We try to pretend that the article is written by one person, or at least several editors following a general theme. We can hardly pretend to complain about "overbuilding" prisons in one paragraph then complain about "overcrowding" in another without some connecting words that seem to connect the two. Either "prisons aren't really overcrowded yet some people have complained..." or "Prisons are overcrowed yet some people have complained that we are building too many.." Something. Student7 ( talk) 12:48, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
Is from a DoJ publication. Calling its use "vandalsim" in any way is far off the mark. Cheers. Collect ( talk) 17:00, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
Succinctly - should this article continue to include everyone remotely under judicial control in the US or should it stick with "incarcerated" individuals? Collect ( talk) 22:27, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
See diff. This 2008 table has U.S. territories, Indian territories, and juvenile inmates. And a good reference. Unfortunately, I have not found the info in one place later than 2008.
Feel free to combine various tables into one wikitext table for a later year. Good luck though. It is an amazing amount of work to find it all, create the wikitable, and add the references to the article.
But please do not delete tables just because they aren't perfect. If you want them to be better, then create them. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 09:26, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
"However, black majority cities have similar crime statistics for blacks as do cities where majority of population is white. For example, white majority San Diego has a slightly lower crime rate for blacks than does Atlanta, a city which has black majority in population and city government"
this is not factual and the source is a book written by someone, not something showing actual statistics.
the top 5 most violent and crime filled American cities, from Memphis to Detroit to Flint, are all black majority.
stop white washing reality for the sake of political correctness, for Gods sake's.
-- Savakk ( talk) 21:32, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
why do I need to refute something that is patently incorrect?
the only American city that is not black majority as a whole that is in the top 5 most violent crime filled cities is New Haven.
and all of the New Haven crime occurs in the inner city areas where blacks live.
http://www.aarp.org/travel/destinations/info-02-2012/five-most-dangerous-cities.2.html
fbi.gov and justicedepartment.gov both have consistent crime figures showing a much, much higher proportion of black people committing crimes vs white people.
or you could take it straight from the horses mouth, black people themselves.
http://www.blackstarproject.org/home/images/facts/deepeningplightblackmeninamerica.pdf
"To join the movement to save young Black men and to educate Black children, call us at 312/842-3527, email us at blackstar1000@ameritech.net or visit our website at www.blackstarproject.org."
clearly not some racist white people, right ?
so let's say what stats they have
"Blacks account for only 12% of the U.S. population, but 44 % of all prisoners in the United States are Black."
Weird, that contradicts huge portions of this entire article.
So.
on one hand we have the government, government agencies, and black community organizations saying yes, there is a problem with a lot of black people and crime.
and on the other hand we have internet vigilantes like you, ensuring that the truth is only the truth when it doesn't offend anyone.
-- Savakk ( talk) 21:52, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Not that I'm necessarily disagreeing with you but may I ask why you started bringing up "political correctness" at the mention of removing that? If it's true its true if not it's not. You became very defensive for some reason. FamAD123 ( talk) 03:39, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
The latest data on the costs of incarceration go back to 2007. Surely there is more recent data from the US budgets? I am especially interested in the cost of corrections. PametUGlavu ( talk) 02:18, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
I've noticed that many of the links in the section about race actually just divert to anti-black and hispanic blogs. Now some of those blogs actually provide links for their opinions which he could probably use as sources but others have nothing backing up what is stated. I suggest removing them, I won't do it myself considering the topic, but I think it would be for the best if someone did. FamAD123 ( talk) 03:36, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
We'll not sure if it were a blog per se, but I was thinking about a link to Halfsigma.com. From reading the article and browsing the site and comments it seem to imply bias to me. Again though, I won't remove anything do to the controversial nature of the subject. FamAD123 ( talk) 06:58, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
"Although the category of political crime does not officially exist in the United States owing to constitutional guarantees, a correlation nevertheless exists between the high rate of political protest in the decade preceding the beginning of the sharp rise of incarceration (1972) and the relative political quietude following massive incarceration, even in a time of great social upheaval such as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the Great Recession."
The author is saying that there are no longer protestors for the most part because most protestors were arrested around 1972. No source to back it up, and frankly sounds like nonsense. 75.138.158.16 ( talk) 18:20, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
I also feel that this section should be removed. It seems to me that the implications of this section are far beyond the limits of reasonable demonstrations, whether they are or are not true. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wclark07 ( talk • contribs) 04:08, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
I have removed the following as I do not think we need to document coincidences here, however suspicious they may be:
"The category of political crime does not officially exist in the United States owing to constitutional guarantees. Nevertheless the high rate of political dissent in the two decades preceding the beginning of the sharp rise in 1980 of both the incarceration rate and the high cost of university education was followed by our present-day political torpor even in a time of great social upheaval such as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the Great Recession in which greater social unrest might be expected. A remarkable coincidence exists between today's political quietude and massive incarceration and suppression of upward mobility through university education." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wclark07 ( talk • contribs) 04:16, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
Comparing modern American with Stalin's USSR is nonsensical. Stalin simply shot people who were apparently guilty or guilty of possible political plotting. Millions were killed. This isn't done today in America. American convicts are mostly interred and not killed outright. Those killed in the USSR, please note, don't show up in the "incarcerated" rates. Student7 ( talk) 14:01, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
I think this article should be either merged or rationalized with the article on " United States incarceration rate". At minimum, each should reference the other. Both are plenty long, I think. There is substantial overlap but far from 100 percent. Even considering the overlap, there seems to be enough material for more than one article. United States incarceration rate discusses "causes", absent (at least as a separate section) from the present article; I'll add a link to the other section. DavidMCEddy ( talk) 21:27, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
Private companies which provide services to prisons combine in the American Correctional Association, a 501(c)3 which advocates legislation favorable to the industry.
Charities granted tax exemption under IRC section 501(c)3 are prohibited from political activity — which the language "legislation favorable" suggests. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RRassendyll ( talk • contribs) 16:25, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
Simple query -- the title of the article is "Incarceration" -- if we include side material such as skimping on food, we could end up with cable TV channels allowed in specific prisons etc. I suggest that the limits are already broken here, but breaking them further makes no sense. Collect ( talk) 16:01, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
While Angela Davis was never actually convicted of anything, few people thought her "innocent" either. Surely a spokesperson against people making money off imprisonment, can be found who wasn't once a wanted fugitive from justice herself! Student7 ( talk) 01:48, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
A paragraph reads
"In neighboring Mississippi, a 2013 Bloomberg report states that assault rates in private facilities were three times higher on average than in their public counterparts. In 2012, the for-profit Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility was the most violent prison in the state, and had 27 assaults per 100 offenders.[95] A May 2012 riot in the CCA-run Adams County Correctional Facility, also in Mississippi, left one corrections officer dead and dozens injured. Similar riots have occurred in privatized facilities in Idaho, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Florida and California.[96][97]"
Much of the rest of the section seems to be balanced, but this, standing alone, doesn't mention whether the prisons compared are maximum or minimum security. This tends to be a problem when considered "anecdotally" as scientists say. Cherry picking one prison is probably not npov.
And what about "riots in public facilities?" Are they non-existent? Or non-reported? Are prison levels being compared equally? Current citations seem okay, but material presented sems unbalanced IMO. Student7 ( talk) 15:28, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
The following was re-inserted:
"By comparison the incarceration rate in England and Wales in October 2011 was 155 people imprisoned per 100,000 residents; [6] the rate for Norway in May 2010 was 71 inmates per 100,000; [7]. Netherlands in April 2010 was 94 per 100,000; [8]. Australia in June 2010 was 133 per 100,000; [9]. and New Zealand in October 2010 was 203 per 100,000. [10]." (names of citations rm for readability here.
It was replaced with the edit summary " these are english speaking developed countries, similar to US."
Montana is English speaking. So is New York state. Why would that make them comparable in an article about Montana? What does "speaking English" have to do with incarceration? Comparisons may be fine in some higher level article but are most likely not germane in a place-named article except for world ranking. Anyway, people in Norway and Netherlands don't understand English unless you shout at them. Nor the people of Northern Australia, even if you shout at them!
Inserting article-irrelevant material is WP:SYNTH even if found in otherwise WP:RS material. One reason should be that it is non- WP:TOPIC. The topic is the United States. Not England. Wikipedia has no interest (in this article) of making England look better or worse than the United States in incarceration. The judicial systems are different, the demographics are different. Montana and New York, by comparison, are twins! There is no basis here for comparisons with any given country. It is WP:OR. Student7 ( talk) 23:17, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
If you go to the so called report.
http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/related_material/2014_US_Nation_Behind_Bars_0.pdf
Page 4 claims: "Over half (53.4 percent) of prisoners in state prisons with a sentence of a year or
longer are serving time for a non-violent offense;" (Endnotes:11)
Endnotes which is on page 18: links to
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p12tar9112.pdf
If you go to page 5 its opposite of what Human rights watch claims.
>On December 31, 2006 (the year in which
admissions to state prisons reached their peak), 50% of all
sentenced prisoners in custody of state correctional authorities
were violent offenders. In 2011 (the most recent year for which
state prison offense data are available), **more than 53% (or
an estimated 718,000 offenders) of the yearend population
was serving a sentence for a violent crime.**
And the sidenotes says on Table 3: 53.5% of crimes in 2011 were for violent crimes
Since 50%+ is the dictiony definition of majority and that the BJS source the HRW used says 53.5% were for violent.
Doesn't it seem that the HRW was wrong in using that "53.4% were for non-violent crime" figure which is the opposite of the BJS source that they themselves linked in the endnote?
72.80.121.153 ( talk) 03:23, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
It's from the census, and I see this problem in the original data too, which either means I don't know how to read it properly (more likely) or it's just plain wrong. Here:
|- !Ethnicity !Male !Female !Total |- |White non-Hispanic || 678 || 91 ||- |- |Black non-Hispanic || 4,347 || 260 || - |- |Hispanic of any race || 1,775 || 133 || - |- |All inmates || 1,352 || 126 || 732 |} ]]
Just look at the totals - this doesn't make any sense to me. All inmates - 1,352 males, 126 females, so 732 in total? And that includes 4,347 black inmates? What is going on here? Anybody? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.183.253.150 ( talk) 06:02, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
I moved the following links from the External links section. These may make good sources for the article but they do not comply with policies for external links.
Joja lozzo 01:56, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
This article was the subject of an educational assignment in Spring 2015. Further details were available on the "Education Program:University of Michigan/SW 697 Social Work Practice with Community and Social Systems (Winter 2015)" page, which is now unavailable on the wiki. |
Mlstek ( talk) 20:58, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
I plan to add two sections to this page: Mental Illness and LGBT People. Sandbox for Mental Illness and LGBT People
The following feedback was shared with this writer and incorporated into her editing of the sections she added to this page, which were "LGBT People" and "Mental Illness".
I think you intended to include the information from Raul's sandbox here as well, so I will comment on both sandboxes in Melissa's talk section.
On the whole, this page is strong in regards to content. The section on 'Mental Illness' outlines the modern history of disproportionate incarceration rates of mentally ill persons as well as the development of mental illness/ailments while in prison. At times this distinction becomes unclear. For example, I would rework the last piece of the following sentence, so it more clearly articulates the stated prisoners had (if I'm understanding thse sentence correctly) pre-existing "mental illness" not triggered by their time in prison: "over half of all prisoners in 2005 experienced mental illness as identified by “a recent history or symptoms of a mental health problem...”
It might also be beneficial to add something at the end of this section about the intersections of mental illness with race, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Or even current movements/prison organizing work addressing the rights of the incarcerated mentally ill.
For your section on 'LGBT People,' I would maybe add a couple sentences on the larger landscape of LGBT rights in the U.S. to put into context how this then plays out in the justice system. I might take out sentences like the following, because they don't add content/their sentiments are expressed in subsequent lines: "The reasons behind these disproportionate numbers are multi-faceted and complex."
The section 'Solitary Confinement' on Raul's page is strong but sources need to be fully cited. There are a considerable number of news articles cited for statistics and qualitative measures. Maybe look up where these sources pulled their data and cite those as your references? I would link to the webpage for Injustice at Every Turn's Task Force, so readers can see where you're pulling the report from. For this section, I would also link terms like 'solitary confinement,' 'multiracial,' etc. to their respective Wikipedia pages.
Finally, for the 'Conjugal Visits' section, are you adding this to an existing section? If not, I would add a brief intro paragraph before your list explaining the meaning of Conjugal Visit and how it connects to your list of information.
lenamar11 " Lenamar11 ( talk)"
Hey! So, yeah, first thing I think is putting these two sections together into a cohesive, single article. It seems like, Raul, your page is meant to be included within the section "LGBT people" that is currently on Melissa's page? Honestly the conjugal visit part seems a little confusing to me- how did you choose which countries to discuss and for what purpose? If this feels like important information to include then maybe a brief introduction such as "laws about conjugal visits, and their application to same sex couples, vary widely internationally." Although, honestly, the rest of the article seems to focus on the U.S. so this information seems a little out of place.
I really like the information that you all include about LGBT people in general, and that you discuss organizations that work specifically with LGBT folks who are incarcerated. I believe after the second sentence in the second paragraph (starting "Poverty"), you need to add some citations to back up your assertions that these things are experienced disproportionately. The solitary confinement piece also seems like a good place to merge your two articles. The section on Raul's sandbox needs some close editing and citing- for instance, in some places you capitalize "Transgender" and in other places you don't, and there are some other grammatical mistakes. Also this sentence: this method however only increases the harassment they receive from officers and various other staff members as reported by Injustice at every turn- First, this seems like an assertion/opinion rather than fact (even though I agree with it.) Could you change it to something that reflects it's a viewpoint, such as "Advocates for transgender prisoners argue that this method only increases blah blah blah"? Also, it's confusing, what is Injustice at every turn? Is it an org or the title of a report? And also it seems like there's a really long quote in the middle, and it's a little unclear where it ends. Is there any way that, instead of including that long quote, you could simplify/summarize some of the findings and cite the report? I really like the info that you cite, though. Also, SRLP might be a good resource to check out.
Asouc ( talk) 01:20, 11 March 2015 (UTC)asouc
Mlstek ( talk) 17:56, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
Al Jazeera is often documented (see their article) as a mouthpiece of Islamic terrorism. They may have great credentials there! But from a group who supports random beheadings of people they disagree with? Criticizing incarceration in America? Cripes. There have to be thousands of better WP:RS than this! What are they saying that can't be found elsewhere? In one article, they were quoting ACLU. Why can't we quote ACLU? Student7 ( talk) 19:13, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
I put up a merge template at the top of United States incarceration rate. And I suggested there that we talk about it here in order to consolidate discussion. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 20:22, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
This page may be
too long to read and navigate comfortably. |
Some edits (just after mine), removed outdated history. That would be ok, say for the lead. Still, in general, WP is also about history. It might need to be preserved in this article or another. I'm not sure if all of it needs to be, as it can get tedious. The graph, might do (but it only does for the population (that is mostly male, in prisions)). Just bringing this up as a general principle. comp.arch ( talk) 20:11, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
I'm not entirely sure it is unbiased to compare the American system with a third world system, for two reasons: 1) There's a saying that eventually all arguments degenerate to the point where one or both sides is comparing the other to "Nazis." This being the point of lowest merit. For this article, this might be it.
2) For both Nazis and the Gulag, the worst offenders were out waltzing around killing Jews, gypsies, and whatnot. The USSR had what was later called the "Russian Mafia." It was too useful and distressing to try to thwart them; so they persisted. They were not behind bars nor was anyone with any sense trying to put them there. The justice system was an abomination. In the US 98% of cases are resolved by plea bargaining. What does this say about American justice, besides the fact, that most cases are plea bargained down to "non-violent" so unknowing bystanders wring their hands and hearts over people, who, if the system had the time and money, would be serving a lot longer time for violent crimes.
I've served on felony/misdemeanor juries before. The law bends over backwards to accommodate the perps. As soes the jury. Student7 ( talk) 21:00, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
It seems to me that we are jumping from topic to topic here.
Originally, there were "too many Americans" in prison. The entire system was guilty.
This has been narrowed down lately to "It's the police's fault. They are arresting people for no reason." Ferguson, etc.
Now we have "too high bail" as a criterion.
Accompanied by "New York City" statistics. 1. How about moving New York Statistics to a separate article "Incarceration in New York City" with a pointer from this article?
2. How about a separate section or subsection for bail? Unless this is shown to be a mainly NYC problem.
From what I have seen, there are police who "arrest for no reason." There are bad apples in every large group (and some small ones, I presume). But unless a case is made for complete police corruption in the country (already a separate article BTW), I don't think this washes as a general rule. Student7 ( talk) 15:30, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
I've added this image from Commons to this article.
Feel free to use it how you like.
I hope it's a helpful source of information.
Thank you,
— Cirt ( talk) 19:41, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
The statistic just under the heading Prison Population (1 in 100 of American adults in jail or prison on 1 January 2008) is unhelpful--that's New Years Day, and tends to be a time of high arrests for drunkenness, etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by VonFerkel ( talk • contribs) 01:14, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
Thirteenth Amendment to United States Constitution
Response to previous reversion, Relevant Talk Page Sub-section
This is one positive-sum argument the Wrighter will invest whatever it takes in, as winning this Editorial Decision is a necessary preliminary step to reducing via education, n-action, and n-Action incarceration slaveries and indentured servitudes in the States United, now often termed in a slip singular the United States.
The following is the full of a comment that the Wrighter left on the Talk Page of the first Editor who issued an Editorial Reversion, citing Undue Weight and No Original Research, claims that the Wrighter disputes here to apparent closure. If you need an additional newspaper citation beyond what the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution plainly says, the Wrighter can search Lexis Nexis and point to the massive slave, indentured servant dialectic that has been sidelined by State misdirection similar to the 3/5th of "all Other Persons" Agreement. The Wrighter wonders if Wikipedia would institute, in 01790, an Editorial Policy on the Article precluding the description of "all Other Persons" as Slaves.
Here's an example sample of text from the National Park Service that is flatly wrong. Civil Rights Act
Here is the full quote: "Although the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments outlawed slavery, provided for equal protection under the law, guaranteed citizenship, and protected the right to vote, individual states continued to allow unfair treatment of minorities and passed Jim Crow laws allowing segregation of public facilities."
The 'pertinent' (Director Comey F.B.I. synonym: relevant*) part is simply, "the 13th...amendments [sic] outlawed slavery...".
The 13th Amendment *did not outlaw slavery*. The National Park Service, with all due respect, and only in jest, must be smoking peyote on the reading of the all-important 13th Amendment, falling for 'the Abolition Myth'. The 13th Amendment _restricted_ slavery such that Americans and Visitors can only be enslaved or be held subject to involuntary servitude "as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." The National Park Service, and many other well-meaning Federal Agencies are, with all due respect and said with the greatest care, lieing, or the specific writers are very indiviedually ignorant, or more properly, held ignorant of their untruth.
Slavery remains, and is established under the 13th Amendment as a proper punishment for all those duly convicted of a crime. No Supreme Court Decisions since have outlawed slavery or indentured servitude in whole; only in some part, as elements of slavery, like confinement in non-"least restrictive environments" while neither "a harm to oneself or to others" remain in the States under the Constitution of the States United, the formatting of the States that is most resistant to 'United States as singular, 'The United States' singularity' bleed into a _heavily_ 'definitely articled' centralized federalism drift. The States, United and States United hold their plural identity; 'The United States' does not, and has been turned into a singular from its grammatical plural.
We abolitionists of the States United have a Duty to continue working toward Full Abolition, rather than fly the "Mission Accomplished" Banner prematurely. Other Nations have advanced beyond Us on abolition and on Abolition, and to race past in the Standings once again, that needs to be charged toward a change, on delinquencies and crimes minor, mean, and major.
Here is my prior Talkpage riting to the earlier Reverting Editor, who must have believed that the 13th Amendment was not adequately self-explanatory or that a plain reading of the XIII Amendment attains to undue weight or original research.
This is a simple copy-paste from Talkpage Section Header 61: Encarceration and Enslavement in United States, posted on 18:58, 14 January 2017, with Section Header editing on 16:22, 25 January 2017. Please make sure that you read this before issuing another reversion or redaction that erases the use of the cognates for slave or indentured servant _following_ conviction (bond indenturement is not obviously permissible under the 13th Amendment before conviction, as only after conviction can such a penalty of enslaved jail time be administered).
--
Incarceration and Enslavement in the United States[edit] Encarceration and Enslavement in United States[edited 16:22, 25 January 2017]
M. Griffin, thank you for the review of the edit of Human Incarceration in the United States, entered 09:09, 23 December 2016 and reverted on the same-day Wikitime by 15:35. You asked for an authoritative cited reliable source. "Such an assertion will require a cited reliable source." Will the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution qualify? Here is a direct link to a charge-managed, change-managed copy of the text: /info/en/?search=Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text The XIII Amendment reads: Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Another way of writing this XIII Amendment would (woods) be: Section 1. Within the United States and within any place subject to the jurisdiction of the States United, as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, slavery or involuntary servitude—either alone or in combination—are expressly herein fully permitted. Section 2. Congress shall have power to n-force this article through the Body by appropriate legislation. If You can find a logical fallacy in the Section 1 or Section 2 alternative write, i submit the reversion to concrete. But if You read the alternative as a valid and true reconfiguration without loss or addition of meaning to the U.S. Constitution's XIII Amendment, i would ask that the edit to (Human) Incarceration in the United States be reinstated, particularly in how this edit's absence enables making light of the mass incarceration, enslavement, and indentured servitude rates in the all 535 Races of the States United Congress. This citation is more reliable, of higher authority, and more deeply trusted (or perhaps, in a more full reading, distrusted) than any § of Law in the United States Code. As to undue weight, there is no weight supporting non-slavery or non-indentured servitude in the United States. This is not a democracy of printed word count: it's an autocratic fragment of incontrovertible, but convertible, text within a Republican-Democracy, approved by the States as per the Constitution of the United States. This is no different than the misdirection of the 3/5 "Compromise", "three-fifths of all other Persons" (in the confused, endangering miasma-contextualization of Article 1.2.3, only legible under the context of the 01772 Somersett v Stewart: "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."). "The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law [statute], which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasions, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory. It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged." /info/en/?search=Somerset_v_Stewart Just as the Founders would employ evasive langauge to avoid boldly confessing to a crime against humanity in the Three-fifths Compromise, the Civil Law Abolitionists of the Civil War used evasive langauge to reserve Slavery and Indentured Servitude to the Province of the Criminal Law. As a former slave myself, having been imprisoned against my will now multiple times without conviction in the course of study and civil rights actions and subsequent arbitrary custodial detentions and charges, i can attest to the enslavement nature of jail and prison pre-conviction, as enslavement matrices of force are applied in jails that fail to meet free and rehabilitative spec. Free and fair brane illogicity study centers, a.k.a. mental health detainments at grey sites like Madden Brane Illogicity [Madden Mental Health Clinic, Chicago's Southside], need not count as enslavement, but do count as confinements. There's the greatest difference, and if i may, i can attest to the difference, in concert with the prevailing study literature on the corruption and malformation of the penitential penitentiary. My argument is that any discussion of Enslavement and Indentured Servitude in the United States that places undue weight on the word "Incarceration" is against Wikipedia's Editorial Guidelines on Neutral Point-of-View. The commit submitted earlier by this account was meant to correct for that undue, miasmatic languistic weight associated with the XIII Amendment's _oft-collusive misreadings_ in State-financed Education. No State Legislator wants to confess to being a slave master on behalf of the People of the State of Illinois, et. al. as responsible slaveholders. Under conviction, and pre-conviction under the bond and frequently the custodial detention system, We Citizens are slaveholders. We hold 2.3 million slaves, and even more indentured servants, per this "What's the whole pie?" graph of the Prison Policy Institute. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2016.html The number of privately-fully-held slaves in the United States might be 60,000 at any one timepoint (rumored), with 14,500 - 17,500 imported into private bondage per year, mostly classified as "human trafficking victims". As uniquely horrible as human trafficking is sui generis, numerically, to be cold, given the balance of argument burden i still may carry in the instant case, it is but a rounding error on the general figurative reporting number of publicly-held slaves. It is not a rounding error in-and-of itself, as an end to End in-itself, or in relation to the more careful reporting of Our publicly-held slave holdings, and the full shares that Wei all hold as Citizens in slaveries and indentured servitudes as living, breathing Institutions under Management by the States and the Federation. Quick Sources: https://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/2004/34021.htm
/info/en/?search=Human_trafficking_in_the_United_States
i could use Your help, M. Griffin, learning how to source at edit-time with more reliability, so as balance the work of disenchanting, enchanting, and in this case, dismaying > maying the reader. It is not improbable that with heightened, more transparent understanding of the XIII Amendment, We Human Beings and Citizens should still commit brethren to slavery or involuntary servitude periodically, as very well-monitored, very carefully-monitored teaching cases, even as some better "mass sublational" altarnatives emerge, iff only to keep our finger on the pulse of the old systems of justice. It is tragically true that i failed to add an additional cited reliable source to the footer of the article "(Human) Incarceration in the United States". i agree that this deserves better, more transparent referencing than what i offered in the initial commit, and would be grateful for any additional pointers. If You'd still like more academic sourcing, Wei might examine Foucault's Discipline and Punish, and the advantage and disadvantage of "sight unseen" unpenitential penalizations. Even the most cursory fair overviews of Foucault's work include this drive by the conviction-assessors to conceal the nature and brutality of the punishment application. i don't know why, but Wikipedia is shutting down a timestamped youtube link that is guid.ed like so: /BBJTeNTZtGU?t=4m57s Have you ever been in a jail or prison, M. Griffin? If You haven't, i would recommend voluntarily or, if it could be arranged, involuntarily surrendering before restraining this commit on better CORE branch.ed langauge. It's an eye-opening experience, and You'll walk away as an even more authoritative source on the right balance of langauge in this domain. My belief is that the super-majority of those experiencing what i describe as enslavement, like rape innocenters, do not always recognize what they have suffered as rape, or, in this case, enslavement: it takes time, understanding, and the disciplined use of dedazzling langauge to persuade someone suffering such an experience that they can rightfully classify their experience as rape, or slavery, but for the most transparent cases where there are no misdirecting langauge slogs to traverse, like there are of course with some kinds of least-acquaintance rape (like that with coercive but seemingly minimal step-by-step progressive force), the XIII Amendment, and the Three-fifths "Compromise". It takes time: at the beginning, the "minority" expression which is fundamentally Central, Centrist, Centripetal, and Right is hesitant, uncertain, unsure. There are rapes, and there are punitive, preventable, punishable grades of rape, and without phenomenological help of the Sexual [and Slavery] Experiences Surveys, it is hard for anyone who has lost or suffered loss of their innocence to conclude such a high-pressure, highly-affective, permanently transfigurative classification rightly. You might have trouble identifying former slaves uniformly without a survey instrument like that used in more uniformly identifying rape-as-sensitized in the Sexual Experiences Surveys for and with all literal arms involved. i've been a slave, M. Griffin. Of that, there's no remaining classificational question under Amendment XIII. Until reading XIII carefully, after prison enslavement, i was not alert to the plain meaning, because of the languistic misdirection, but now the plain reading leaps out like a flaming, double-edged sword. i've been a slaver, M. Griffin, and still am. If You live in the United States and are a Citizen, You have been and still are, too. i hope You'll help me reapply the edit without maximal further effort. If there's an appeals process i have to go thru, would You brief me on it? i do not know the right channels to go thru to revert the reversion. i'll be attentive to this until Amendment XIII is implemented as clearly as our rewrite on the feints and flak of the Three-Fifths Compromise.
(signature not on original talkpage, at either timestamp above, coming into adherence with comprehensive sigless policy) --
NOTE: From this point forward, New Entry / New Entries, beyond what exists on the Reverting Editor's Talkpage
On a sidebar to the Unconstitutionality of the present system of Bond as experienced by the Wrighter under a plain reading of the 13th Amendment's prohibition of involuntary servitude:
A plain reading of the 13th Amendment holds the experience of "Bond" in States like Illinois to be abjectly Unconstitutional.
If Citizens take flight, they take flight. See the Crito, by Socrates. Why should the State of Illinois hold a person whose only "crime" remains held to be Innocent Self-defense for 28 days of slavery, when the Socratic so held is ready to return regularly to Court without question of Flight-risk Bond, always and already made irrelevant by Education in Crito, and in ongoing acceptance of the Laws by virtue of visiting and living as a non-Citizen or Citizen within the State? The Wrighter wonders if the State Legislatures require a reading of Crito at some point before entry into the States' Legislatures. Perhaps the State of Ohio, and other States, hold the teaching of the Crito to be an illegal teaching of religion, yet then penalize all within the world of Ohio for not knowing the Crito, or, as in the Righter's case, under the *presumption* that they do not know and live their Crito, absent 'full faith and credit' for the promised presumption of innocence issued in and by State Civics Education.
Mature to Socrates, State Legislatures, as courtesy to the 13th Amendment bond protocalling gadflies, those whom present Better prototypes of what's possible Wei speak of enslavements per year; 11,000,000 annual involuntary commitments into slavery, per the [Prison Policy Initiative| http://www.prisonpolicy.org], with last-Wikipedia-Measure-meter contribution by an anonymous adam@innocentest.org. This goes deep, into States United recognition of the Right for Innocent Ex-Felons to Vote, a Constitutional Question that would have easily turned the 02000 Election from George W. Bush, the Wrighter's favored candidate (then) to Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., who narrowly lost that Election because Innocents (rehabilitated Ex-Convicts) in the State of Florida were stripped of their Suffrage Permanently, as if Suffrage is an "alienable Right" of the Certified Rehabilitated. The absence of any default process for blanket-recovery of Suffrage the day of release in the State of Florida, and all other States that trend toward such typically State-faction-favoring beliefs in the alienability of Suffrage, is evidence enuf (enough is enuf) of a Deep, Unonstitutional Violation of 'Lifelong Student Suffrage', violating the impulse drive-chain toward learning further about Whole-bodied Justice. Whether read on deontology or consequentialism, the justifications of State Legislatures must yield to the plain reading of the 13th Amendment, or the Crito, or Dewey's Theses in 'Democracy and Education', understood comprehensively.
The Writer pleads ignorance as to the whole of Dewey's Theses, with a severe sense of shame and ambaressment. This is not 'legislator labs' material; there remains a serious gap in the Riter's CORE Education.
Nonetheless, the Wrighter would persist to the point of pointing out to the existing States Legislatures that Innocent Ex-Felons wholly deserve the Inalienable Right to Vote, just as Felons under Conviction, suffering penalty, wholly deserve the Inalienable (arguably, the Wrighter concedes, but once on one major Voting Opportunity per all counts together of conviction, in the worse or worst cases of lasting conviction, to maintain the preciousness of its value, and the crucial import and impact of the 'Felon Voting Margin Rights-leverage') Right to Suffrage. Nothing will lead to faster character reform than Prisoners turning on each other, educating each other from year over year, from generation over generation, for doing something (anything so severe, under a steady, steadily monitored and adjusted sensitization curve, with a 'Majority of Convicts Enjoy All-Event Suffrage' Minimal Calmunity Rights Guarantee), so as to strip the Prisoners' Political Unions of Margin Voting Rights Power, or expand it proudly to a Full Strength Voting Bloc, in Interstate Calmpetition. The more Convicts who can Vote, the more Margin Power that Prisoners carry, the prouder its Citizens shall be, or, hold steady Populists, come to be.
In the article on Perennial Education, a Wikipedia Contributor quotes Robert Maynard Hutchins, the transformational President of The University of Chicago, the administrative primary author of what's known as the Hutchins College, who writes in the same vein:
The business of saying ... that people are not capable of achieving a good education is too strongly reminiscent of the opposition of every extension of democracy. This opposition has always rested on the allegation that the people were incapable of exercising the power they demanded. Always the historic statement has been verified: you cannot expect the slave to show the virtues of the free man unless you first set [her] free. When the slave has been set free, he has, in the passage of time, become indistinguishable from those who have always been free ... There appears to be an innate human tendency to underestimate the capacity of those who do not belong to "[Our]" group. Those who do not share our background cannot have [Our] ability. Foreigners, people who are in a different economic status, and the young seem invariably to be regarded as intellectually backward ... [1]
The plain reading of the 13th Amendment only allows some penalties, specifically enslavement and indentured servitude, *on conviction*. There is no authorization for stripping Convicts of Inalienable Right of Suffrage that We have matured to concede without nary a poll tax, which were still "bar" outs in the days that the 13th Amendment Passage occurred. No such reserves exist any longer, and a history of conviction does not count as a just Bar claim to bar Suffrage any longer.
The 13th Amendment only permits slavery and indentured servitude, which being stripped of suffrage definitionally constitutes, only after and while under penalty of conviction, not at all not before, while held concurrently 'weakly Innocent' ("Presumed Innocent", but somehow not treated Innocent) by the State while being treated as Guilty, raising such severe questions of "To bond, or not to bond. To be, or not to be. To leave a slave, or rescue a slave." struggling questions in Parents, Partners, and Peers minds when faced with responding to an Indentured Servant's Distressed "Bond Payment, please!" Call, for refusal to let the Indentured Servant open their Stored Belongings and pay a static, "community guaranteed rate" fee from their own checkbook for being, in the eyes of the Law, Innocent, but under a 'probable cause' suspicion. Other 'flight risk' reductions, like High and Higher Ethics in Education, are advised and advisable, but require training in Philosophy and Ethics, which some States, like my own home-state, the State of Ohio, strangely outlaw as the Teaching of Religion. Yes, it is Religion: CORE Religion, a Base-layer Religion taught directly and indirectly Civics Class, as well, while teaching Civic Faith, the Faith of Hh Human Being and Citizen CORE. Other financial, social sureties surely exist in these days that do not involve holding someone in slavery because (i.e. on the proximate cause) that you will not allow them access to their checkbook, and will not socially bond them to the Court with an "Agreed-upon" Social Network Innocentesting news blast (already done by the Press [a bit* wrongli], in this Innocentest's Case), in lieu of supportive parents or best friends carrying enuf (enough is enuf) Faith in Our Civil Rights and Trustworthiness to take an extremely inconvenient, expensive Emergency Plane Flight to socially bond out someone who the State is treating as if they area Guilty and Dangerous on Release, without any cause other than the State not permitting Checkbook Access, or reducing the Social Bond Out to something manageable, like a certified remote video conference from a town in North Carolina to Chicago, Illinois, just to be sure the Innocent understands their Crito, understands they must return to the right Agora for Court Apology. Persons non-local should not be subject to arbitrary detention as slaves and servants of the State because their families are located at great distance, defined in Federal Law as more than 50 miles from the record-holding site. See the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 01974, as Amended, which should be a model for treating Innocents whom the State, at that time, may believe require morally-charged education⁺. How many slave and (indentured) servant days are served to the State without Agreement on the basis of a long drive, an expensive flight, or the langauge of and protocol of the bond that violates the Presumption of Innocence, structurally the moment 'release on own cognizance' and 'own f.asset, at community-guaranteed rate issue' begins? Even Innocents accused of homicide should be released, until conviction, from Involuntary Indentured Servitude, unless it can be shown they are an imminent danger to themselves or to others. The only reason the State can, under the 13th Amendment, penalize an Innocent with enslavement or indentured servitude is in concluding Innocentesting for an Innocent | Cooperative Innocentest in a manner that secures conviction 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. As soon as any solid 'reasonable doubt' emerges in Innocentesting, the Innocentesting ends, and the prospect of penalty of slavery or indentured servitude lifts, at least as long as no further Innocenter steps forward attesting to a fresh (or still permitted, by Statute or either Constitution, Anatomic or Positive) need for Innocentesting, under formal review or, in the case of the Anatomic Constitution, sometimes, as Found reasonable by a properly-Constituted Constitutional Court, a less-than-formal re:view.
There are too many unconstitutional, bad laws to cite, all formed under 'the Abolition Myth', underpinned by a false, falsified, inaccurate independent but not interpendent reading of the XIII Amendment in Schools, under the demanding gaze of the State Legislators who do not, despite the evidence to the contrary, want textbooks to teach that Slavery still exists. On market analysis, Legislator politicians, Executive politicians, and Legislative and Executive Politician Appointees in Texas, California managing likeability generally for near-perpetual sinecure incumbencies, when available, determine the vast majority of educational materials delivered to Civics Classrooms. This is not commentary on the Offices, but on the Persons selected to occupy said Offices, at least so long as the Voices of the Slaves and Indentured Servants can be muzzled and silenced from denied Suffrage, and exclusion from the civic education and activism that comes with and anticipates the Rite of the Vote. The Principle, once accepted on Wikipedia, will propagate and percolate slowly (or perhaps quickly, in legal terms) into Calmunity Action.
Whatever the outcome of this New Section, and the determination of the ED policy of the Editors, in light of the Right and Wrong neutral-point-of-view in this prolonged but not duly prolong.ed state of State complicity over 'the Abolition Myth', and all the education charge is denies to those slavers wholly or fractionally enslaving/indenting, and those wholly enslaved/indentured, on the HSTRYical, instant, and long concerns of Justice, the Writer will want (oft-wont) and need to cite this in Court Pleadings. Others will need to consider doing the same, to form a Century Altaring Life and Liberty Movement, toward a crescendo that achieves a day where no one in the States United, anywhere, has been stripped under Our Laws, nor under their Spirit, of Suffrage, nor of the redemptions, atonements, and indiviedual, generally secretive penance that Suffrage can and does bring.
Adam D. Clayman ( talk) 19:00, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
There seems to be an assumption in the article that selling drugs is not, per se, violent, and therefore okay. i think statistics show a diminishment of longevity if not an early death for most hard drug users. Death could be in a hospital, I suppose, or at home, in bed. Maybe it is "non-violent" but it doesn't seem beneficial either. (I realize that most low level drug dealers are forced into it because of their drug habit).
(BTW. Seems like a bit of a lengthy rant, above. Can't some of that be "hidden"? Student7 ( talk) 19:06, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
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This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I'm surprised to see there is no section on the history of incarceration in the United States. Why is this?
I think it would be beneficial to have a section that details the historical/sociological evolution of the U.S. prison system. It's not unprecedented: Foucault wrote broadly about the birth and development of the prison, and Oxford put out a book called The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society. These books include some details on the American system, though they are largely based on the European cases. It would make sense to have a section on history, including details such as the first prison/jail in the U.S./colonies, the way prisons evolved and grew through U.S. history (including structures and security, management, type of inmates, mission of the institution - punishment, reformation, correction, rehabilitation, detention, etc. - and major events in U.S. prison history such as the creation of the Federal Bureau of Prisons or any prison-related legislation.
While this material has the potential to make the article too long overall, I cannot currently find a wikipedia article that has such information on the U.S. system. These are details that should not be overlooked. 76.15.31.146 ( talk) 20:47, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
New to this article. Didn't want to just throw it in there but the new figure for county and local jail pop as of June 2009 is 767,000, bureau of Justice statistics as quoted in USA Today 4 June 2010. Student7 ( talk) 15:54, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Why is this page focused on blacks vs. whites, hispanics, etc. And under the 'Race' subtitle, you only focused on the black population in prisons, but no other race. I think you need to rethink a more proactive way to do this page over rather than singling out specific race groups. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.227.156.201 ( talk) 15:19, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
I do watch probably too much tv. but i cannot say that irrespectfuly too myself as i work full time .. but what i do see is incredible in all walks of life..
Can i just say one thing that i
have suggestion with....!!!! people can cahange.. as we all know!! and there are people who cannot!!but i think if people can relate to music then maybe we and you will have something in prisons... maybe have channnels of music that can distract people from their problems, im not sure but i do watch... and i do think a lot, music is a release.. maybe im behind the times!! maybe you have tried this and maybe i have not seen enough!! just a suggestion.. music to the individual i think important as long as it is calming or dancing in a nice way may assist in their ability to communicate in another language, music can translate in many ways ... i think prisons would benefit from having more music!!!! Just a thoughtful human hope all prisoners have a hope!! And i hope all prison guards are safe!!
I do watch probably too much tv. but i cannot say that irrespectfuly too myself as i work full time .. but what i do see is incredible in all walks of life..
Can i just say one thing that i
have suggestion with....!!!! people can cahange.. as we all know!! and there are people who cannot!!but i think if people can relate to music then maybe you will have something in prisons... maybe have channnels of music that can distract people, im not sure but i do watch... and i do think a lot, music is a release.. maybe im behind the times!! maybe you have tried this and maybe i have not seen enough!! just a suggestion.. music to the individual as long as it is calming or dancing in a nice way may assist in their ability to communicate in another language, music can translate in many ways ... i think prisons would benefit from having more music!!!! Just a thoughtful human hope all prisoners have a hope!! And i hope all prison guards are safe!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.241.69.50 ( talk) 14:27, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
Seem like on high-resolution screens the pictures was messed up. I tried to re-arrange them, and I hope I did not lose any information. When moving pictures around try to change size of the web browser window to make sure it still looks good on different screen sizes. Great article, great pictures! Innab ( talk) 22:24, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
The chart is from here:
I believe violent crime also dropped in Canada, and it does not have the same large increase in the rate of incarceration.
The chart is original research for this article. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 17:36, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
(unindent) Yes, exactly. People seem to be interpreting the chart in 2 completely opposite ways. Some people believe the huge increase in the incarceration rate in the US caused the lower violent crime rate.
Others can point to the chart and say that there is no good reason for a huge surge in the rate of incarceration. I believe it has been shown in studies that the death penalty, the harshest punishment in many people's eyes, does not lower murder rates.
Here is something that might be added to the info around the chart:
American Exception. Inmate Count in US Dwarfs Other Nations'. New York Times. Apr 22, 2008. Page 1, Section A, Front Page. http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v08/n417/a04.html
From the New York Times article (emphasis added):
Still, it is the length of sentences that truly distinguishes American prison policy. Indeed, the mere number of sentences imposed here would not place the United States at the top of the incarceration lists. If lists were compiled based on annual admissions to prison per capita, several European countries would outpace the United States. But American prison stays are much longer, so the total incarceration rate is higher. ... "Rises and falls in Canada's crime rate have closely paralleled America's for 40 years," Mr. Tonry wrote last year. "But its imprisonment rate has remained stable." |
References for the opposite view, and other views could be added too. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 00:20, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Why is this article completely sex/gender neutral when the overwhelming majority of people incarcerated are males? There are sections related to age and race but not one on sex. A quick google search showed "(2007 - prison inmates by race, sex and age) "Of the 2.3 million inmates in custody, 2.1 million were men and 208,300 were women (table 9)." Or 91% of all adults in prison are men.
Contrary to the edit summary removing it, this section is important. The impact of race on the enforcement of US criminal laws, as well as disproportionate sentencing, is very well-established and documented with terms like "Driving While Black" (DWB) in popular vernacular. The section is not well sourced and I can't speak to the exact stats in it but the solution to those issues is not to remove the section altogether, but rather to tag it for improvement (or just improve it, it's not like this information is not readily available online and trivially sourced if that's your beef with it.)-- Cybermud ( talk) 05:14, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
The facts and figures for incarceration usually omit temporary incarceration in the form of arrests, so the information only shows how many are incarcerated NOW, and not how many HAVE BEEN at some point. Since 1 in 3 men age 18 to 29 have been arrested, which would be an unbelievable figure if it weren't so well documented, I think it's very important to devote a substantial portion of this article to that "indicator" of the universality of incarceration. It's as, or more common than things like baldness, freckles, blue eyes, etc.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120018806/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
"being arrested is a relatively common experience for young adults: nearly one-quarter of the entire cohort and one-third of the males in the cohort were arrested at least once."
Note that the 1 in 3 figure is conservative. It excludes juvenile arrests and arrestes after age 30 and above. It also doesn't appear to include "detainments" for interrogation, immigration, etc, which can be indistinguishable from a long prison sentence in many cases.
Qwasty ( talk) 23:31, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
Reading the current version of the article, the section on youth incarceration occupies between a third and a half of the entire article, and cuts the Table of Contents in two, distracting from the more general description of the system. Perhaps it should be split off into a separate article, with a synopsis and a Main Article link leading to it? Failing that, the subheadings should be downgraded; we don't really need ToC entries for 9.4.1 and 9.4.1.1-9.4.1.5. It won't shorten the article, but at least the ToC won't be cluttered with unnecessary links. ShadowRangerRIT ( talk) 15:40, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
Hey, this article appears to be only anti-incarceration. Reasons for incarceration are not discussed. As it stands it probably needs the NOPOV tag. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.105.44.77 ( talk) 05:24, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm reverting I.P.68.105.44.77's edit. California's Three Strikes Law IS infamous to poor minorities.
--NBahn (
talk) 06:28, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
This article is not fairly neutral. While the first few sections are fine, the later sections are almost all anti-incarceration, specifically the sections ShadowRangerRIT mentioned. I agree it would help the POV issues if the Youth Incarceration section was spun into its own article (although that article would be immediately labeled POV unless changes were made).
Below are the major issues which must be addressed for the article to present a neutral point of view:
Anyway, please do not remove the NPOV tag until these issues are addressed. I'll also see if I can dig up some information to address these issues. -- SouthernNights ( talk) 14:07, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Good job on the split. This definitely fixes the NPOV problems. Thanks for doing it.-- SouthernNights ( talk) 16:10, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
We cannot have a "criticism" section by itself. The criticism in the article needs to be worked in throughout the article. Having a "criticism" section is bad writing. WhisperToMe ( talk) 07:38, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
Entry section 2nd Paragraph is extremely biased (sensational statement). It doesn't demonstrate the complexity of offenders (inmates or prisoners) that are housed in Supermax Security prisons in contrast to minimum security. This paragraph needs specific and accurate data.
In the United States, prisons are operated at various levels of security, ranging from minimum-security prisons that mainly house non-violent offenders to Supermax facilities that house well-known criminals and terrorists such as Terry Nichols, Theodore Kaczynski, Eric Rudolph, Zacarias Moussaoui, and Richard Reid. --
...plus the following section should be removed, or be written in the context of a new section dedicated exclusively to popular historical delinquents that have been idealized or whom have become sensational subjects of examination.
...well-known criminals and terrorists such as Terry Nichols, Theodore Kaczynski, Eric Rudolph, Zacarias Moussaoui, and Richard Reid. --
18.150.7.94 ( talk) 13:39, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
I was just wondering about the table inserted as a GIF image. Why? This data could easily be entered as a Wiki table and would be more readable.
-- Mcorazao ( talk) 14:53, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
I did so because of a combination of two reasons:
Why do none of the charts and graphs show the distribution of prisoners by race, e.g. http://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/ ? 99.27.201.226 ( talk) 16:59, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
I believe there was formerly a section dedicated to that matter. Somebody must have gone and deleted the whole section on race, class, and minorities without going through the appropriate channels such as opening it up for debate on the Talk Page.
76.15.31.146 (
talk) 20:51, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
Just wondering... if the us population is 300 million and the prison population is 7 million, then why does it say that 1 in 100 adults are in prison?? shouldng it say 1 in 43 people?? or 1 IN 27 ADULTS? (adults make up 63% of the population, out of 300 million people of which 7 million are incarcerated) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.235.85.1 ( talk) 19:05, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
This article drips with a particular POV - it needs to be discarded and written by someone else. While I more or less agree with this particular POV, it has no place here. The statistics and counts and international comparisons are scary enough, they can and should be presented in a neutral manner. People can come to thier own conclusions.
The viewpoint of this article is actually quite "conservative" as is the media in general. How can a corporate media driven by profit be otherwise? Why should we make these facts seem less "scary"? Why condone the atrocities of our own government? It may not be politically correct to criticize the government, but where has being P.C. gotten us? Let's wake up and start rocking the boat. Otherwise you may be the next victim of the "justice" system.
The facts demonstrate that the reality is actually much worse than you think!
"The U.S. now locks up its citizens at a rate 5-8 times that of the industrialized nations to which we are most similar, Canada and Western Europe," said Marc Mauer, Assistant Director of The Sentencing Project, a non-profit criminal justice research and advocacy group.
"While Canada imprisons 116 people out of every 100,000 in the country, the U.S. locks up 702 people per 100,000."
While I concur that being politically correct is not entirely important, especially as it is a POV itself, I must say that finding reliable info about this subject that isn't biased has been hard. Statistics can be very misleading. Such as my personal fav, '5 out of 3 Americans can't do fractions.' How does one determine what is biased and what isn't on the internet? No solution for SF yet. Tell me on
Talk:Sagittarius Flame if you have any ideas how to better research this topic w/o getting all stuck in a library. 21:16, 1 November 2006 (UTC)Sagittarius Flame
The section about supermax prisons says that television privileges in the ADX prison are "virtually non-existent", but then further down it describes each cell as containing a "13-inch black and white television". What are those televisions for if television privileges are so rare? -- 209.108.217.226 18:02, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
Those televisions are used for the same purpose they serve in the general population. They are the opiate of the masses.
I spent five years working in the ADX. The article concerning the ADX is wrong on several issues. All cells have televisions. The inmates get only local stations and an institutional channel. All cells have windows. You can not see the sky from the windows, only dead space. All cells have showers in them. Recreation is done in groups of 5 to 10 based on population. The unit yards are big enough to have two full basketball courts and a hand ball court. The rec. yard that the article mentions does exist. It is used for inmates who for what ever reason cannot have recreation with their fellow inmates. The cells are not sound proof. It has been my experience that inmates at the ADX are there for a reason.
This section seems POV, or at least poorly written. E.g.:
"This overcrowding problem was caused by the War On Drugs of the 1980s."
No NPOV source is cited for this. From the information in this article, only coincidence can be inferred; causality is not shown. If someone has sources to support this claim, please reference them. Otherwise, this section should be removed or edited. --- blahpers 02:29, 2004 Nov 5 (UTC)
Some observers have gone so far as to accuse the United States of deliberately developing the legal system and the prison industry as a means of social control beyond that normally associated with criminal justice.
there are many inaccuracies and over-generalizations in this article, such as all of the info in the Maximum Security section, to begin with.
and
"Now, whenever a new prisoner is incarcerated, a criminal must be released to satisfy the fire code requirement. Consequently, prisoners of all kinds are let out of prison early."
this implies a stable prison population, implies that prisoners are not kept 8 to a 6-man cell, implies that prisons are not doubling capacity by simply adding a second bed to one-man cells, implies new prisons are not being built, when in fact,
the population is constantly growing, prisoners are NOT let out without regard to what crime they were convicted of, prison overcrowding is rampant, with inmates housed in overcapacity situations, put into prison gymnasiums and on rooftops, prisons with one man cells are doubling capacity by adding beds, and prison construction is at an all-time high and increasing yearly.
What are the sources for the data? Just that one book referenced in the article? Pedant 02:10, 2004 Nov 12 (UTC)
I agree with the posting above. Prison population in the U.S. has consistently risen in recent history [1]. Prisoners are often double-bunked, contrary to what the current entry says [2].
Here is an article that would corroborate the assertion that the War on Drugs is responsible for the increase in prison population in the U.S. [3].
eappleton 08:43, 2004 Nov 12 (UTC)
All this stuff about large percentages of inmates being for non-violent offenses needs to be worked on - Statistics lie and everyone knows it. It's extremely common for violent criminals to be convicted of "non-violent" drug crimes because often those are the easiest crimes to prove. Often, victims and witnesses are violent crimes are afraid to come forward, or are threatened and intimidated by defendants and their friends. Drug cases are much easier to prove because they usually involve undercover police officers who are much less likely to be threatened or intimidated. Tufflaw 01:46, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)
I don not know enough about the prison system to question the accuracy of this article, though some of its assertions seem ludicrous. But this article has been written in a very biased manner, something which is clear throughout.
My reading of this article is that most of it is in line with current criminological and sociological thought. I belive is article is in need of better citations, but as a whole, those who disagree with the facts presented should specify which individual facts they have a problem with, and we can deal with the issues individually.
I will stay out of the POV/NPOV debate, but I will say this is a very short article. It can't be left for months tagged as POV without anyone offering any changes. I would encourage people to be bold and edit the page as they see fit. Robneild 08:55, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
This article is warped by its manifest bias. An article purported about "prisons in the US" would be reasonable expected to focus on the prisons themselves: the various security levels, notable facilities, historical development, conditions for prisoners, impact on popular culture, etc. To have the article kick off with a discussion of the incarceration rate is absurd, and clearly motivated by the author's opinion that the rate is too high. This rant belongs in a discussion of the criminal justice system, not an aticle about prisons.
Sorry I don't have time to edit this article myself, but the bias accusation is valid, and the POV tag should be removed only when the article is NPOV, not because a timer has expired. Jeffr 14:08, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
Jay Drew —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
205.132.248.64 (
talk) 17:18, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
According to [4], there is no information for 17 countries. This alone is enough to count as a "few" countries. Furthermore, only a handful, if *any*, are likely to have a higher incarceration rate than the US.
The initial sentence as stands, as Tufflaw reverts to, is quite simply misleading and inaccurate. The qualifier is barely justified (as indeed it may be the case that none of the 17 countries have higher incarceration rate). Certainly adding "few" is quite important if the qualifier is there at all.
zoney ♣ talk 30 June 2005 23:29 (UTC)
I think we may safely assume that countries not reporting statistics, or reporting underestimated statistics, are authoritarian regimes, or are poor, disorganized etc. and do not have the means to support appropriate statistic gathering. Thus, we may accurately state that the US is the developed country with the highest incarceration rate. David.Monniaux 06:57, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Could someone add some information about the structure of the US Prison system, the differences between Federal, State and County prisons and how they relate to their respective justice systems? -- BadSeed 20:32, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
Removed "(the U.S. prison pop) is around 22% of the total world prison population" for all of the reasons noted in talk. Without accurate data for various countries the assertion is specious. Prison lists nine million incarcerated worldwide--North Korea alone would almost certainly take this up 5-10%. Make a guesstimate from [5]. Marskell 11:16, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
What an unsalvageable mess. I would support deleting this just so we can be cleansed; maybe, then, we can start fresh.
Lotsofissues 19:26, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
We should just rework this entire mess, and delete unnecessary things as needed.
Mulder416 3:01, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
As an onlooker, just removing huge chunks does not seem to be the answer since it just makes it harder to understand. I shall revert, but someone may remove my edits should they see fit - but I ask you all strongly consider rewriting (on a test page?) BEFORE you remove stuff, no matter how small the replacement may be, something I feel is needed in its place. By all means strip the article, just don't destroy what slight knowledge is currently in place. Ian 13ID:540053 20:11, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
Dispite knowing nothing about the subject, I have cleaned up the article alittle, generally to make it NPOV and make sence. I have also added footnote references whereever possible to show statistic sources. Should be a good base for some expansion now :) Enjoy and good luck! Ian 13ID:540053 10:35, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
I see in the article "As of 2003, the incarceration rate in the United States was 482 per 100,000 residents" but looking at the U.S. Department of Justice PDFs that seems to exclude various groups like juveniles? Is this usual? It goes on to say the total rate is 701 per 100,000 in 2002. Robneild 23:38, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
See Talk:Bubba. - 70.109.72.185 23:32, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
This article needs to be totally overhauled, and brought into compliance with NPOV. Being in the law enforcement field, I can tell you that there is no possible way to arrive at many of the statistics that are mentioned. I vote to just remove this article all together, or NUKE it and start from scratch. Johnppd24 15:41, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
So far, I've moved a few things from the beginning to alleviate some of the worst symptoms. An intro sentence has been added to the Comparison w/ other countries section and I moved a paragraph from the beginning that fit in better with the criticism than with the beginning of this article. I did this because the beginning of this article used to sound a lot more POV than acceptable. A total overhaul was a bit impractical. Let's work with what we have and chop out the bad fat of this article. 21:08, 31 October 2006 (UTC)Sagittarius Flame see Talk:Sagittarius Flame to comment directly.
Well, I've done a bit more grammatical work and axed a few less-than-NPOV statements and questionable ones as well. Please cite sources if you revert anything you've done to my edits and/or see Talk:Sagitttarius Flame to comment directly on any edits I've done. 21:03, 1 November 2006 (UTC)Sagittarius Flame
The prison system in the United States and everyone that interacts with it is part of a closed society from which it is practically impossible, perhaps completely impossible, to obtain neutral data. For instance, the news media report facts that are usually not factual but politically motivated interpretations of random information. The court system reports information that is colored by its motivation to reduce workload. The police report information that has been adjusted to improve their working conditions, increase pay, and reduce their exposure to lawsuits. In many states, the county sheriffs department runs county prisons and they report their own point-of-view. The state prison systems are usually run by political appointees and their staff report information from their perspective. The federal government, with its prisons, reports only what they feel the people “need to know.” Other information is kept secret. With all those points-of-view about the prison systems, it is unlikely that there is a neutral point of view unless the article degenerates to a road map of where prisons are, rather than what they are.
With this in mind, I think that fixing the article simply requires better sourcing. For instance, when one reports that some prison uses psychotropic drugs to control its population, the information needs to be sited, at last as “According to the California Department of Metal Health, in their May, 2005 article on prison population…” Even if the California Department of Mental Health is wrong, and publishing blatant falsehoods, the article remains correct because the article is not required to determine truth, only to properly reference information. You certainly know that there is often a large gap between information and truth. If you want the truth, you will never be able to publish an article about prisons for the reasons cited in my first paragraph. Moreover, whatever you may have heard about prisons --- it is much worse than anybody would dare report. The correctional industry attracts workers who are deviates from the normal kind of person. These persons have their own point-of-view, which so filters (corrupts) information that normal people really do not know how to interpret it! -- LymanSchool 16:45, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I tried to rewrite a lot to be grammatically correct and more politically correct. I tried to get rid of the weasel words as well. Of course, it can always be reverted, but I think this goes a long ways towards fixing it up. Cheers -- LymanSchool 21:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
In the section entitled 'Comparison With Other Countries' the article states "the U.S. rate is three to eight times that of the Western European nations". What constitutes 'Western Europe'? The Czech Republic for example? It is further west than Finland. The countries of Europe have massively different incarceration rates and in my opinion it makes no sense to talk about a GEOGRAPHICAL area like Europe when comparing cultural/social issues. It is like comparing incarceration rates between the northern and southern hemispheres. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.9.138.200 ( talk) 08:53, 8 April 2007 (UTC).
Whoever wrote the statistics part completely misread the USDOJ site. The numbers are for 2005 and the 1.4 million figure applies only to incarcerated women. It's written in plain English there, so I'm not sure how anybody got their signals crossed, but the size of the US prison population is a pretty hot topic so people might want to not completely mess up the statistics. Anybody who wants to correct it can feel free to; the USDOJ site that those numbers were taken from is here: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm. This is why Wikipedia isn't respected--it isn't even copied properly from primary sources. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.108.65.16 ( talk) 15:00, 29 April 2007 (UTC).
I must be missing something, because the first two highlights on BJS page you referenced don't jive. With a total of 2,245,189 prisoners, the US population would have to be in excess of 450,000,000 to account for only 497 per 100,000 residents. Dividing total # of prisoners by total population gives more like 750 prisoners per 100,000 residents. Does the 2.2M include, and the 497 per 100,000 exclude, inmates not convicted, i.e., those being held over for trial or arraignment? The difference is roughly 750,000, which seems ridiculously high, even considering how backlogged the courts are. Someone please enlighten me.
They make up 27% of the prison population in the United States. I'm adding this to the article. -- Rotten 23:23, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
I've reverted edit by 72.69.77.177 - big NPOV issues with the paragraph they have added plus no citation. Will-h 15:16, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
The only source I can find for the 22% is the world socialist website, with no backup whatsoever. Further, the citation is to an MSN article which DOES NOT say the same thing. I removed the statistic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.81.111.246 ( talk) 19:06, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Are there any corelations between the prison populations and the politics of the locality? For example, are right wing states likely to have more prisoners? Are there any studies relating to this subject? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.105.134.113 ( talk) 18:50, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Footnotes 7 and 8 are dead links. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.117.151.10 ( talk) 13:23, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
I have done so because:
"According to DoJ incarceration rate in the US is 509 prisoners per 100,000 ppl
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm". This comes to about one-half of one percent (0.5% or 0.005) while there is an uncited line in the introduction that comes to about one percent (1% or 0.01). So what should be done about this?
--NBahn (
talk) 06:27, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
why is united states so fucking blind about prisons seames to me your fucking clueless why not fit crime with punshmite ive been in the system and have been a member of society you have failed the system because your clueless about life in general you or anyone has any clue about how life is after prison yes some prisoners have no bussines beeing on the but some do dont pas judgment on every person`
Europe treats drug addicts rather than incarcerating them. They view it as a medical problem rather than a criminal problem. Holland's decades of experience shows that treatment of drug abuse is vastly cheaper than our alternative. We also have the highest rate of gun-related homicides of all industrialized nations. These two distinctions could account for a large difference in the prison populations between the U.S. and Europe. See "How They Do It Better" in U.S. News & World Report 3/18/07. Nevada10 ( talk) 06:24, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
There have been no links between access to guns and total crime rate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.96.94.170 ( talk) 15:56, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
The high figure of juvenile incarceration may seem troublesome to an outsider or layperson. However, it should be noted that a significant majority of these juvenile offenders are not "Bobby down the street who goes to middle school with your kid." Many of them are hard core gang members who commit murder, armed robbery, and rape. These 13 to 17 year old males are terrorizing their neighborhoods with violent crimes. Psychologically and emotionally they are already damaged goods for they come from homes that are either dysfunctional or mom and dad (if he is around) spend all their time working to make ends meet. Consequently, there is no supervision at home and very little time for nurture. This breeds generations of damaged human beings. By the time they have been popped for their first robbery or murder there is no turning back (for most of them). What is the state to do? Let them be to kill and destroy additional lives and families? Or incarcerate in order to protect society at large?
Articles who spin these incarceration figures into a story of "boo-hoo-ing" for all these poor prisoners seem to forget that somewhere along the path there was a victim - who in the worst case scenario is no longer living whose family shall forever live with that loss or a woman who will never recover emotionally from a brutal sexual violation. Where is the compassion for those Americans? Where are the bleeding hearts for the oftentimes poor, hard working, voiceless, minority Americans who leave in constant fear of these predators? Toosbuy ( talk) 12:48, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
Reference #45, ^ Holman and Zeiderberg, 2001, p. 8, implies that there is a complete citation earlier in the list of references. I couldn't find one .....
There are several other examples of this particular reference past # 45.
Best,
Rosmoran ( talk) 12:13, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
The second line of the article currently reads "According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 2,266,800 adults were incarcerated in U.S. federal and state prisons, and county jails at year-end 2011 – about 0.7% of adults in the U.S. resident population.". However 2,266,800 is approximately 0.7% of the _total_ US population (314 million). So unless I'm missing something, this line should be edited by removing the word 'adult' or, preferably, by changing the 0.7% number into its correct value. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 145.97.225.76 ( talk) 17:20, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
Fixed: https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Incarceration_in_the_United_States&oldid=600094662 — TJJFV ( talk) 01:09, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
One chart shows incarceration at 750 or so per 100,000 population. This seems okay. Another shows 5,000 per 100,000 of blacks (5%). This seems okay. Hispanics at 2,000 per 100,000 of Hispanics. This seems high, but okay. But the ethnicity chart appears to show white incarceration at nearly 900 or so per 100,000. Somebody has to be under 750 in order for the charts to "average out." Not everyone can be incarcerated over the average value. Some group must be incarcerated less! Student7 ( talk) 17:14, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
The usual rates are shown: so many whites in the general population, so many blacks, with many higher percentages of the latter in jail. What we are not seeing, and I am pretty sure there are credible statistics, is out of how many accused people, white and black, wind up in jail. If the accused white people were getting a walk, while blacks (only) served time, this would clearly demonstrate a judicial bias against blacks. I have the feeling that this is not true, though. Student7 ( talk) 21:01, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
(unindent). It is a complex subject. There are already articles on the topic. See:
There is only room for a summary of opinions here, and any summary is bound to be incomplete, wrong, or lacking in some way. Wikipedia usually just links to the other articles in this case. Everything other than statistics can go to those articles where the topics can be covered in a much more complete and nuanced way that follows WP:NPOV guidelines. All significant viewpoints can be represented and referenced.
Here is the info you added, Student7:
Various studies have shown that, in recent decades, there has not been disparity in black vs white crime statistics in black-run vs white-controlled cities, say Atlanta vs San Diego. In the largest counties, the rates of conviction for accused blacks was slightly less than the conviction rates for whites, for example.
Stephan Thernstrom (2011-03-29).
"America in black and white: one nation indivisible". p. 273. |
I moved the info to the ethnicity section. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 21:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
The tag has been erased which stated that nothing was there to document that blacks are accused of crimes at a much higher rate than whites (are convicted less, which was a surprise) but still wind up in jail at higher rates. And this occurs in black-run cities in the same proportion as white-run ones. If there is a statement that documents this, I missed it. Can the editor provide me a ptr to that information? or the text itself? Student7 ( talk) 12:39, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Comparing the rates for this country to those of others is fairly irrelevant. Most countries have relatively homogeneous populations, by comparison, and an often commonly accepted, or understood, manner of behavior. They have different laws, some of which are pre-emptive for crime, considered a violation of "rights" in the US.
There needs to be an npov reason for selecting those particular nations for comparison. Because they speak English, is probably not valid, and therefore WP:OR no matter who did it. There needs to be a penitential reason for their selection. Student7 ( talk) 13:01, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
What's wrong with including them in the body of the text? The npov reason is that they are comparably developed OECD countries. The issue isn't heterogeneity of population, or "commonly accepted manners of behavior," for goodness sake, it's that it's US policy to incarcerate people more, irrespective of crime rates. Sorry if reality has a pov. Meesher ( talk) 20:59, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
To Whom it May Concern:
I am a student in at Amherst College and I am currently taking a class called "Women History in America: 1865 to the Present". Our final project is to choose a wikipedia article and bolster the information provided. In order to be respectful of the other editors of this page, I want to explain the changes that I intend to make in case there are any concerns.
Historically, research and knowledge of the criminal justice system has been based upon a male paradigm, which inevitably fails to address the specific needs of female inmates. I believe it is crucial to explore the ways in which women’s experiences both coincide with and differ from those of their male counterparts, especially since the growth rate of female incarceration is rapidly increasing. First of all, I propose to add a section on substance abuse and the lack of treatment available for inmates to break free of their addictions. Inadequate health care serves as another main concern. Prison's lack qualified medical personnel and resources to meet the physical and mental health needs of inmates and more specifically, women's specific needs related to reproduction, mental health, and feminine care are particularly grave and remain unaddressed. Moreover, the female experience in regard to pregnancy and childbirth conflicts with a prison system originally designed for men. I also believe it is important to have a section on sexual abuse- a significant threat for female inmates. There are alarming rates of sexual aggression in prisons; however, even the Prison Rape Elimination Act signed into law in 2003, is focused mainly on sexual misconduct in male prisons rather than also in female correctional facilities.
While the previous issues I have raised focus specifically on experience in prison, I will also include two sections on what happens after prison by examining barriers to entry and effects on family structures. As they reenter their communities, former inmates confront sparse job opportunities, limited options for affordable housing, and the challenge of reestablishing relationships. Thus, the transition from prison to home is difficult and rates of recidivism remain high. In terms of effects on family structures, I would like to look at the way single parents remain especially vulnerable to the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, which seems to expedite the process of terminating parental rights. In addition, incarcerated parents confront major difficulties with maintaining contact with their children. Obstacles that inhibit contact between mothers and their children include geographical distance, lack of transportation, lack of privacy, inability to cover travel expenses and the inappropriate environments of correctional facilities. It is also a huge issue when single mothers are incarcerated because they are much more likely to lose their children to the State.
Each of my changes will be corroborated with facts and citations in order to ensure my information is credible and reliable. I believe that the changes I intend to make are extremely important in order to strengthen this article and make it more holistic and detailed.
Thank you very much. I look forward to hearing your feedback. Sincerely, Dancing Dolphin — Preceding unsigned comment added by DancingDolphin3 ( talk • contribs) 23:11, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't have a solution (sorry), but we have way more subsections than we should have for readability. Some should be included together somehow. I will think about it and hope you will too! Student7 ( talk) 14:07, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
We don't really want to see 50 plus states and territories penal groups listed by name. These will need to be summarized in some terse fashion. Student7 ( talk) 12:01, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
I see a lot of editing of that section yesterday. I don't keep up with it, and it looks like it is becoming propaganda-filled. I suggest jettisoning all of that section except for stats of private versus public prisons. The rest can go to the talk page for the "see also" article that is linked:
I don't intend to edit that section of this article. Much of this article is not being watched much if at all. The "see also" articles are better watched through their watchlists that are specific to those articles. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 18:47, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
This section has NPOV issues, a number of unsourced assertions, plus it's all predicated on one source- a study of privatization based on the tiny data sample of three prisons. Needs revising with better sources. Plausible deniability ( talk) 23:12, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
That the general population of the prisons are less educated has been touched upon in various sentences, but no real statistics. They are probably available somewhere.
A second demographic that may be missing is "poverty," or poverty-background, a bit harder to construct. Student7 ( talk) 13:09, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Another demographic that could be covered is religious background. Eav ( talk) 22:33, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
This image needs to show the increase in general population level of the United States alongside the prison population in a single image to give a more accurate view and show how much the percentage of those incarcaretated has gone up. At the moment there is no real context. - 90.219.249.36 ( talk) 13:12, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
A phrase reads "According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) 7,225,800 people at yearend 2009 were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole". It seems to me that there is a heck of a lot of difference being in jail or prison and being on probation or parole. I can appreciate that these statistics ought to be somewhere. Just not in an article on incarceration which hardly has the relative freedom that parole or probation have. Lumping them altogether is non- WP:TOPIC. Student7 ( talk) 20:00, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
It may not be a fallacy but what we used to call apples and oranges. This sentence could be clarified "According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) 7,225,800 people at yearend 2009 were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole — about 3.1% of adults in the U.S. resident population.[7][4] 2,292,133 were incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails at year end 2009.[1][3][7][4]" to show if the 2.3 million are all adults or not and then it would go better with the first sentence in the paragraph. That's a classic problem with statistics and with price comparisons (my field of expertise for a&o sitations). 4.249.63.53 ( talk) 15:29, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
There were redundant listings for "see also." The intent of this subsection is to refer the reader to articles neglected, because they didn't fit into the article. For example, in "Persecution of Hindus", a "See also" subsection might link to "Persecution of Buddhists." There was no reason to include the latter in the article. But the intent was not to be a summary of all the links in the article. In fairness, some of these links have been in the "see also" subsection historically and recently placed into links. Anyway, they are gone now. Student7 ( talk) 23:18, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
A quote says (in part): "... "Some states exclude certain items when reporting corrections expenditures. Twenty-one states wholly or partially excluded juvenile delinquency counseling from their corrections figures .... Seventeen states wholly or partially excluded spending on drug abuse rehabilitation centers.."
Of course this is what we want for this article. The reverse should be reported for this article. "This includes non-incarcertion figures" for the majority (29) of the states! I realize it may be hard to help, but including non-incarceration figures is non- WP:TOPIC. On the other hand, we would probably want to count juvenile institutions and criminally insane for this article. Can't cherry pick the announcement. Really need a better quote. I rather shows that this source is biased, IMO. Student7 ( talk) 23:15, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
Yet, the article reads:
By comparison the incarceration rate in England and Wales[clarification needed] in February 2011 was 154 people imprisoned per 100,000 residents
There is a time to mince ones words, and that statement is absolute horses**t. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.101.194.102 ( talk) 17:20, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
"Since most DOCs already post inmate information on their websites, critics claim this is a moot point. " I am unable to figure out what "this" refers to in the sentence above from the Correspondence section. Could someone who understands what is meant please improve the phrasing? Girlgeek z ( talk) 14:19, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
The numbers go back and forth and this is clearly a distortion, as many sources say the opposite. Clearly, someone is pushing a singular POV here and citing sources that promote their own POV. Viriditas ( talk) 02:27, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
Sorry to remove the new chart, but this is the same chart as we already have below, based on same report (i.e. "Sourcebook of criminal justice statistics 2003"). But in the new chart the header is misleading, because this is not all incarcerated Americans, but only the portion under state and federal jurisdiction. This does not include local jails, transit, out to court etc. See explanation of the difference between "number of prisoners in custody" and the "number under jurisdiction" in "Correctional Population in the United States, 2010. See pg.2 - http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus10.pdf :
BJS’s official measure of the prison population is the count of prisoners under the jurisdiction or legal authority of state and federal adult correctional officials (1,605,127 in 2010) (appendix table 1). These prisoners may be held in prison or jail facilities located outside of the state or federal prison system. The prison population reported in table 1 is the number held in custody or physically housed in state (1,311,136 in 2010) and federal (206,968 in 2010) adult correctional facilities, regardless of which entity has legal authority over the prisoners (appendix table 2). This includes state and federal prisoners held in privately operated facilities. The difference between the number of prisoners in custody and the number under jurisdiction is the number of state and federal prisoners held in the custody of local jails, inmates out to court, and those in transit.
Innab ( talk) 18:53, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
A quote now appears: "In the past two decades, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education. In 2011, California spent $9.6 billion on prisons, versus $5.7 billion on higher education..... The state spends $8,667 per student per year. It spends about $50,000 per inmate per year. Why is this happening? Prisons are a big business. Most are privately run. They have powerful lobbyists and they have bought most state politicians. Meanwhile, we are bankrupting out states and creating a vast underclass of prisoners who will never be equipped for productive lives. [98]"
I edited out with .... the supposed fact that California "only" (usually a key phase before a pov statement) one university and build a lot more prisons. It is not imperative that we use pov phrases from otherwise quotable references.
But I am not sure that even the remainder should be used. It certainly shouldn't be in a box. It may be counting capital expenditures on prisons versus operating expenses on higher education, which makes no sense. BTW, it is not apparent that making the comparisons between prisons and education is npov anyway. It's like saying that we spend more on abortion each year than we do on alleviating Lou Gehrig's disease. That might be true, but it is irrelevant to the argument. It is plainly political and virtually useless in an encyclopedia.
Also, it makes some of the rest of the article incoherent since it talks about overcrowding in prisons. We try to pretend that the article is written by one person, or at least several editors following a general theme. We can hardly pretend to complain about "overbuilding" prisons in one paragraph then complain about "overcrowding" in another without some connecting words that seem to connect the two. Either "prisons aren't really overcrowded yet some people have complained..." or "Prisons are overcrowed yet some people have complained that we are building too many.." Something. Student7 ( talk) 12:48, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
Is from a DoJ publication. Calling its use "vandalsim" in any way is far off the mark. Cheers. Collect ( talk) 17:00, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
Succinctly - should this article continue to include everyone remotely under judicial control in the US or should it stick with "incarcerated" individuals? Collect ( talk) 22:27, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
See diff. This 2008 table has U.S. territories, Indian territories, and juvenile inmates. And a good reference. Unfortunately, I have not found the info in one place later than 2008.
Feel free to combine various tables into one wikitext table for a later year. Good luck though. It is an amazing amount of work to find it all, create the wikitable, and add the references to the article.
But please do not delete tables just because they aren't perfect. If you want them to be better, then create them. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 09:26, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
"However, black majority cities have similar crime statistics for blacks as do cities where majority of population is white. For example, white majority San Diego has a slightly lower crime rate for blacks than does Atlanta, a city which has black majority in population and city government"
this is not factual and the source is a book written by someone, not something showing actual statistics.
the top 5 most violent and crime filled American cities, from Memphis to Detroit to Flint, are all black majority.
stop white washing reality for the sake of political correctness, for Gods sake's.
-- Savakk ( talk) 21:32, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
why do I need to refute something that is patently incorrect?
the only American city that is not black majority as a whole that is in the top 5 most violent crime filled cities is New Haven.
and all of the New Haven crime occurs in the inner city areas where blacks live.
http://www.aarp.org/travel/destinations/info-02-2012/five-most-dangerous-cities.2.html
fbi.gov and justicedepartment.gov both have consistent crime figures showing a much, much higher proportion of black people committing crimes vs white people.
or you could take it straight from the horses mouth, black people themselves.
http://www.blackstarproject.org/home/images/facts/deepeningplightblackmeninamerica.pdf
"To join the movement to save young Black men and to educate Black children, call us at 312/842-3527, email us at blackstar1000@ameritech.net or visit our website at www.blackstarproject.org."
clearly not some racist white people, right ?
so let's say what stats they have
"Blacks account for only 12% of the U.S. population, but 44 % of all prisoners in the United States are Black."
Weird, that contradicts huge portions of this entire article.
So.
on one hand we have the government, government agencies, and black community organizations saying yes, there is a problem with a lot of black people and crime.
and on the other hand we have internet vigilantes like you, ensuring that the truth is only the truth when it doesn't offend anyone.
-- Savakk ( talk) 21:52, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Not that I'm necessarily disagreeing with you but may I ask why you started bringing up "political correctness" at the mention of removing that? If it's true its true if not it's not. You became very defensive for some reason. FamAD123 ( talk) 03:39, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
The latest data on the costs of incarceration go back to 2007. Surely there is more recent data from the US budgets? I am especially interested in the cost of corrections. PametUGlavu ( talk) 02:18, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
I've noticed that many of the links in the section about race actually just divert to anti-black and hispanic blogs. Now some of those blogs actually provide links for their opinions which he could probably use as sources but others have nothing backing up what is stated. I suggest removing them, I won't do it myself considering the topic, but I think it would be for the best if someone did. FamAD123 ( talk) 03:36, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
We'll not sure if it were a blog per se, but I was thinking about a link to Halfsigma.com. From reading the article and browsing the site and comments it seem to imply bias to me. Again though, I won't remove anything do to the controversial nature of the subject. FamAD123 ( talk) 06:58, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
"Although the category of political crime does not officially exist in the United States owing to constitutional guarantees, a correlation nevertheless exists between the high rate of political protest in the decade preceding the beginning of the sharp rise of incarceration (1972) and the relative political quietude following massive incarceration, even in a time of great social upheaval such as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the Great Recession."
The author is saying that there are no longer protestors for the most part because most protestors were arrested around 1972. No source to back it up, and frankly sounds like nonsense. 75.138.158.16 ( talk) 18:20, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
I also feel that this section should be removed. It seems to me that the implications of this section are far beyond the limits of reasonable demonstrations, whether they are or are not true. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wclark07 ( talk • contribs) 04:08, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
I have removed the following as I do not think we need to document coincidences here, however suspicious they may be:
"The category of political crime does not officially exist in the United States owing to constitutional guarantees. Nevertheless the high rate of political dissent in the two decades preceding the beginning of the sharp rise in 1980 of both the incarceration rate and the high cost of university education was followed by our present-day political torpor even in a time of great social upheaval such as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the Great Recession in which greater social unrest might be expected. A remarkable coincidence exists between today's political quietude and massive incarceration and suppression of upward mobility through university education." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wclark07 ( talk • contribs) 04:16, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
Comparing modern American with Stalin's USSR is nonsensical. Stalin simply shot people who were apparently guilty or guilty of possible political plotting. Millions were killed. This isn't done today in America. American convicts are mostly interred and not killed outright. Those killed in the USSR, please note, don't show up in the "incarcerated" rates. Student7 ( talk) 14:01, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
I think this article should be either merged or rationalized with the article on " United States incarceration rate". At minimum, each should reference the other. Both are plenty long, I think. There is substantial overlap but far from 100 percent. Even considering the overlap, there seems to be enough material for more than one article. United States incarceration rate discusses "causes", absent (at least as a separate section) from the present article; I'll add a link to the other section. DavidMCEddy ( talk) 21:27, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
Private companies which provide services to prisons combine in the American Correctional Association, a 501(c)3 which advocates legislation favorable to the industry.
Charities granted tax exemption under IRC section 501(c)3 are prohibited from political activity — which the language "legislation favorable" suggests. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RRassendyll ( talk • contribs) 16:25, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
Simple query -- the title of the article is "Incarceration" -- if we include side material such as skimping on food, we could end up with cable TV channels allowed in specific prisons etc. I suggest that the limits are already broken here, but breaking them further makes no sense. Collect ( talk) 16:01, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
While Angela Davis was never actually convicted of anything, few people thought her "innocent" either. Surely a spokesperson against people making money off imprisonment, can be found who wasn't once a wanted fugitive from justice herself! Student7 ( talk) 01:48, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
A paragraph reads
"In neighboring Mississippi, a 2013 Bloomberg report states that assault rates in private facilities were three times higher on average than in their public counterparts. In 2012, the for-profit Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility was the most violent prison in the state, and had 27 assaults per 100 offenders.[95] A May 2012 riot in the CCA-run Adams County Correctional Facility, also in Mississippi, left one corrections officer dead and dozens injured. Similar riots have occurred in privatized facilities in Idaho, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Florida and California.[96][97]"
Much of the rest of the section seems to be balanced, but this, standing alone, doesn't mention whether the prisons compared are maximum or minimum security. This tends to be a problem when considered "anecdotally" as scientists say. Cherry picking one prison is probably not npov.
And what about "riots in public facilities?" Are they non-existent? Or non-reported? Are prison levels being compared equally? Current citations seem okay, but material presented sems unbalanced IMO. Student7 ( talk) 15:28, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
The following was re-inserted:
"By comparison the incarceration rate in England and Wales in October 2011 was 155 people imprisoned per 100,000 residents; [6] the rate for Norway in May 2010 was 71 inmates per 100,000; [7]. Netherlands in April 2010 was 94 per 100,000; [8]. Australia in June 2010 was 133 per 100,000; [9]. and New Zealand in October 2010 was 203 per 100,000. [10]." (names of citations rm for readability here.
It was replaced with the edit summary " these are english speaking developed countries, similar to US."
Montana is English speaking. So is New York state. Why would that make them comparable in an article about Montana? What does "speaking English" have to do with incarceration? Comparisons may be fine in some higher level article but are most likely not germane in a place-named article except for world ranking. Anyway, people in Norway and Netherlands don't understand English unless you shout at them. Nor the people of Northern Australia, even if you shout at them!
Inserting article-irrelevant material is WP:SYNTH even if found in otherwise WP:RS material. One reason should be that it is non- WP:TOPIC. The topic is the United States. Not England. Wikipedia has no interest (in this article) of making England look better or worse than the United States in incarceration. The judicial systems are different, the demographics are different. Montana and New York, by comparison, are twins! There is no basis here for comparisons with any given country. It is WP:OR. Student7 ( talk) 23:17, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
If you go to the so called report.
http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/related_material/2014_US_Nation_Behind_Bars_0.pdf
Page 4 claims: "Over half (53.4 percent) of prisoners in state prisons with a sentence of a year or
longer are serving time for a non-violent offense;" (Endnotes:11)
Endnotes which is on page 18: links to
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p12tar9112.pdf
If you go to page 5 its opposite of what Human rights watch claims.
>On December 31, 2006 (the year in which
admissions to state prisons reached their peak), 50% of all
sentenced prisoners in custody of state correctional authorities
were violent offenders. In 2011 (the most recent year for which
state prison offense data are available), **more than 53% (or
an estimated 718,000 offenders) of the yearend population
was serving a sentence for a violent crime.**
And the sidenotes says on Table 3: 53.5% of crimes in 2011 were for violent crimes
Since 50%+ is the dictiony definition of majority and that the BJS source the HRW used says 53.5% were for violent.
Doesn't it seem that the HRW was wrong in using that "53.4% were for non-violent crime" figure which is the opposite of the BJS source that they themselves linked in the endnote?
72.80.121.153 ( talk) 03:23, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
It's from the census, and I see this problem in the original data too, which either means I don't know how to read it properly (more likely) or it's just plain wrong. Here:
|- !Ethnicity !Male !Female !Total |- |White non-Hispanic || 678 || 91 ||- |- |Black non-Hispanic || 4,347 || 260 || - |- |Hispanic of any race || 1,775 || 133 || - |- |All inmates || 1,352 || 126 || 732 |} ]]
Just look at the totals - this doesn't make any sense to me. All inmates - 1,352 males, 126 females, so 732 in total? And that includes 4,347 black inmates? What is going on here? Anybody? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.183.253.150 ( talk) 06:02, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
I moved the following links from the External links section. These may make good sources for the article but they do not comply with policies for external links.
Joja lozzo 01:56, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
This article was the subject of an educational assignment in Spring 2015. Further details were available on the "Education Program:University of Michigan/SW 697 Social Work Practice with Community and Social Systems (Winter 2015)" page, which is now unavailable on the wiki. |
Mlstek ( talk) 20:58, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
I plan to add two sections to this page: Mental Illness and LGBT People. Sandbox for Mental Illness and LGBT People
The following feedback was shared with this writer and incorporated into her editing of the sections she added to this page, which were "LGBT People" and "Mental Illness".
I think you intended to include the information from Raul's sandbox here as well, so I will comment on both sandboxes in Melissa's talk section.
On the whole, this page is strong in regards to content. The section on 'Mental Illness' outlines the modern history of disproportionate incarceration rates of mentally ill persons as well as the development of mental illness/ailments while in prison. At times this distinction becomes unclear. For example, I would rework the last piece of the following sentence, so it more clearly articulates the stated prisoners had (if I'm understanding thse sentence correctly) pre-existing "mental illness" not triggered by their time in prison: "over half of all prisoners in 2005 experienced mental illness as identified by “a recent history or symptoms of a mental health problem...”
It might also be beneficial to add something at the end of this section about the intersections of mental illness with race, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Or even current movements/prison organizing work addressing the rights of the incarcerated mentally ill.
For your section on 'LGBT People,' I would maybe add a couple sentences on the larger landscape of LGBT rights in the U.S. to put into context how this then plays out in the justice system. I might take out sentences like the following, because they don't add content/their sentiments are expressed in subsequent lines: "The reasons behind these disproportionate numbers are multi-faceted and complex."
The section 'Solitary Confinement' on Raul's page is strong but sources need to be fully cited. There are a considerable number of news articles cited for statistics and qualitative measures. Maybe look up where these sources pulled their data and cite those as your references? I would link to the webpage for Injustice at Every Turn's Task Force, so readers can see where you're pulling the report from. For this section, I would also link terms like 'solitary confinement,' 'multiracial,' etc. to their respective Wikipedia pages.
Finally, for the 'Conjugal Visits' section, are you adding this to an existing section? If not, I would add a brief intro paragraph before your list explaining the meaning of Conjugal Visit and how it connects to your list of information.
lenamar11 " Lenamar11 ( talk)"
Hey! So, yeah, first thing I think is putting these two sections together into a cohesive, single article. It seems like, Raul, your page is meant to be included within the section "LGBT people" that is currently on Melissa's page? Honestly the conjugal visit part seems a little confusing to me- how did you choose which countries to discuss and for what purpose? If this feels like important information to include then maybe a brief introduction such as "laws about conjugal visits, and their application to same sex couples, vary widely internationally." Although, honestly, the rest of the article seems to focus on the U.S. so this information seems a little out of place.
I really like the information that you all include about LGBT people in general, and that you discuss organizations that work specifically with LGBT folks who are incarcerated. I believe after the second sentence in the second paragraph (starting "Poverty"), you need to add some citations to back up your assertions that these things are experienced disproportionately. The solitary confinement piece also seems like a good place to merge your two articles. The section on Raul's sandbox needs some close editing and citing- for instance, in some places you capitalize "Transgender" and in other places you don't, and there are some other grammatical mistakes. Also this sentence: this method however only increases the harassment they receive from officers and various other staff members as reported by Injustice at every turn- First, this seems like an assertion/opinion rather than fact (even though I agree with it.) Could you change it to something that reflects it's a viewpoint, such as "Advocates for transgender prisoners argue that this method only increases blah blah blah"? Also, it's confusing, what is Injustice at every turn? Is it an org or the title of a report? And also it seems like there's a really long quote in the middle, and it's a little unclear where it ends. Is there any way that, instead of including that long quote, you could simplify/summarize some of the findings and cite the report? I really like the info that you cite, though. Also, SRLP might be a good resource to check out.
Asouc ( talk) 01:20, 11 March 2015 (UTC)asouc
Mlstek ( talk) 17:56, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
Al Jazeera is often documented (see their article) as a mouthpiece of Islamic terrorism. They may have great credentials there! But from a group who supports random beheadings of people they disagree with? Criticizing incarceration in America? Cripes. There have to be thousands of better WP:RS than this! What are they saying that can't be found elsewhere? In one article, they were quoting ACLU. Why can't we quote ACLU? Student7 ( talk) 19:13, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
I put up a merge template at the top of United States incarceration rate. And I suggested there that we talk about it here in order to consolidate discussion. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 20:22, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
This page may be
too long to read and navigate comfortably. |
Some edits (just after mine), removed outdated history. That would be ok, say for the lead. Still, in general, WP is also about history. It might need to be preserved in this article or another. I'm not sure if all of it needs to be, as it can get tedious. The graph, might do (but it only does for the population (that is mostly male, in prisions)). Just bringing this up as a general principle. comp.arch ( talk) 20:11, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
I'm not entirely sure it is unbiased to compare the American system with a third world system, for two reasons: 1) There's a saying that eventually all arguments degenerate to the point where one or both sides is comparing the other to "Nazis." This being the point of lowest merit. For this article, this might be it.
2) For both Nazis and the Gulag, the worst offenders were out waltzing around killing Jews, gypsies, and whatnot. The USSR had what was later called the "Russian Mafia." It was too useful and distressing to try to thwart them; so they persisted. They were not behind bars nor was anyone with any sense trying to put them there. The justice system was an abomination. In the US 98% of cases are resolved by plea bargaining. What does this say about American justice, besides the fact, that most cases are plea bargained down to "non-violent" so unknowing bystanders wring their hands and hearts over people, who, if the system had the time and money, would be serving a lot longer time for violent crimes.
I've served on felony/misdemeanor juries before. The law bends over backwards to accommodate the perps. As soes the jury. Student7 ( talk) 21:00, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
It seems to me that we are jumping from topic to topic here.
Originally, there were "too many Americans" in prison. The entire system was guilty.
This has been narrowed down lately to "It's the police's fault. They are arresting people for no reason." Ferguson, etc.
Now we have "too high bail" as a criterion.
Accompanied by "New York City" statistics. 1. How about moving New York Statistics to a separate article "Incarceration in New York City" with a pointer from this article?
2. How about a separate section or subsection for bail? Unless this is shown to be a mainly NYC problem.
From what I have seen, there are police who "arrest for no reason." There are bad apples in every large group (and some small ones, I presume). But unless a case is made for complete police corruption in the country (already a separate article BTW), I don't think this washes as a general rule. Student7 ( talk) 15:30, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
I've added this image from Commons to this article.
Feel free to use it how you like.
I hope it's a helpful source of information.
Thank you,
— Cirt ( talk) 19:41, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
The statistic just under the heading Prison Population (1 in 100 of American adults in jail or prison on 1 January 2008) is unhelpful--that's New Years Day, and tends to be a time of high arrests for drunkenness, etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by VonFerkel ( talk • contribs) 01:14, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
Thirteenth Amendment to United States Constitution
Response to previous reversion, Relevant Talk Page Sub-section
This is one positive-sum argument the Wrighter will invest whatever it takes in, as winning this Editorial Decision is a necessary preliminary step to reducing via education, n-action, and n-Action incarceration slaveries and indentured servitudes in the States United, now often termed in a slip singular the United States.
The following is the full of a comment that the Wrighter left on the Talk Page of the first Editor who issued an Editorial Reversion, citing Undue Weight and No Original Research, claims that the Wrighter disputes here to apparent closure. If you need an additional newspaper citation beyond what the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution plainly says, the Wrighter can search Lexis Nexis and point to the massive slave, indentured servant dialectic that has been sidelined by State misdirection similar to the 3/5th of "all Other Persons" Agreement. The Wrighter wonders if Wikipedia would institute, in 01790, an Editorial Policy on the Article precluding the description of "all Other Persons" as Slaves.
Here's an example sample of text from the National Park Service that is flatly wrong. Civil Rights Act
Here is the full quote: "Although the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments outlawed slavery, provided for equal protection under the law, guaranteed citizenship, and protected the right to vote, individual states continued to allow unfair treatment of minorities and passed Jim Crow laws allowing segregation of public facilities."
The 'pertinent' (Director Comey F.B.I. synonym: relevant*) part is simply, "the 13th...amendments [sic] outlawed slavery...".
The 13th Amendment *did not outlaw slavery*. The National Park Service, with all due respect, and only in jest, must be smoking peyote on the reading of the all-important 13th Amendment, falling for 'the Abolition Myth'. The 13th Amendment _restricted_ slavery such that Americans and Visitors can only be enslaved or be held subject to involuntary servitude "as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." The National Park Service, and many other well-meaning Federal Agencies are, with all due respect and said with the greatest care, lieing, or the specific writers are very indiviedually ignorant, or more properly, held ignorant of their untruth.
Slavery remains, and is established under the 13th Amendment as a proper punishment for all those duly convicted of a crime. No Supreme Court Decisions since have outlawed slavery or indentured servitude in whole; only in some part, as elements of slavery, like confinement in non-"least restrictive environments" while neither "a harm to oneself or to others" remain in the States under the Constitution of the States United, the formatting of the States that is most resistant to 'United States as singular, 'The United States' singularity' bleed into a _heavily_ 'definitely articled' centralized federalism drift. The States, United and States United hold their plural identity; 'The United States' does not, and has been turned into a singular from its grammatical plural.
We abolitionists of the States United have a Duty to continue working toward Full Abolition, rather than fly the "Mission Accomplished" Banner prematurely. Other Nations have advanced beyond Us on abolition and on Abolition, and to race past in the Standings once again, that needs to be charged toward a change, on delinquencies and crimes minor, mean, and major.
Here is my prior Talkpage riting to the earlier Reverting Editor, who must have believed that the 13th Amendment was not adequately self-explanatory or that a plain reading of the XIII Amendment attains to undue weight or original research.
This is a simple copy-paste from Talkpage Section Header 61: Encarceration and Enslavement in United States, posted on 18:58, 14 January 2017, with Section Header editing on 16:22, 25 January 2017. Please make sure that you read this before issuing another reversion or redaction that erases the use of the cognates for slave or indentured servant _following_ conviction (bond indenturement is not obviously permissible under the 13th Amendment before conviction, as only after conviction can such a penalty of enslaved jail time be administered).
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Incarceration and Enslavement in the United States[edit] Encarceration and Enslavement in United States[edited 16:22, 25 January 2017]
M. Griffin, thank you for the review of the edit of Human Incarceration in the United States, entered 09:09, 23 December 2016 and reverted on the same-day Wikitime by 15:35. You asked for an authoritative cited reliable source. "Such an assertion will require a cited reliable source." Will the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution qualify? Here is a direct link to a charge-managed, change-managed copy of the text: /info/en/?search=Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text The XIII Amendment reads: Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Another way of writing this XIII Amendment would (woods) be: Section 1. Within the United States and within any place subject to the jurisdiction of the States United, as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, slavery or involuntary servitude—either alone or in combination—are expressly herein fully permitted. Section 2. Congress shall have power to n-force this article through the Body by appropriate legislation. If You can find a logical fallacy in the Section 1 or Section 2 alternative write, i submit the reversion to concrete. But if You read the alternative as a valid and true reconfiguration without loss or addition of meaning to the U.S. Constitution's XIII Amendment, i would ask that the edit to (Human) Incarceration in the United States be reinstated, particularly in how this edit's absence enables making light of the mass incarceration, enslavement, and indentured servitude rates in the all 535 Races of the States United Congress. This citation is more reliable, of higher authority, and more deeply trusted (or perhaps, in a more full reading, distrusted) than any § of Law in the United States Code. As to undue weight, there is no weight supporting non-slavery or non-indentured servitude in the United States. This is not a democracy of printed word count: it's an autocratic fragment of incontrovertible, but convertible, text within a Republican-Democracy, approved by the States as per the Constitution of the United States. This is no different than the misdirection of the 3/5 "Compromise", "three-fifths of all other Persons" (in the confused, endangering miasma-contextualization of Article 1.2.3, only legible under the context of the 01772 Somersett v Stewart: "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."). "The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law [statute], which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasions, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory. It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged." /info/en/?search=Somerset_v_Stewart Just as the Founders would employ evasive langauge to avoid boldly confessing to a crime against humanity in the Three-fifths Compromise, the Civil Law Abolitionists of the Civil War used evasive langauge to reserve Slavery and Indentured Servitude to the Province of the Criminal Law. As a former slave myself, having been imprisoned against my will now multiple times without conviction in the course of study and civil rights actions and subsequent arbitrary custodial detentions and charges, i can attest to the enslavement nature of jail and prison pre-conviction, as enslavement matrices of force are applied in jails that fail to meet free and rehabilitative spec. Free and fair brane illogicity study centers, a.k.a. mental health detainments at grey sites like Madden Brane Illogicity [Madden Mental Health Clinic, Chicago's Southside], need not count as enslavement, but do count as confinements. There's the greatest difference, and if i may, i can attest to the difference, in concert with the prevailing study literature on the corruption and malformation of the penitential penitentiary. My argument is that any discussion of Enslavement and Indentured Servitude in the United States that places undue weight on the word "Incarceration" is against Wikipedia's Editorial Guidelines on Neutral Point-of-View. The commit submitted earlier by this account was meant to correct for that undue, miasmatic languistic weight associated with the XIII Amendment's _oft-collusive misreadings_ in State-financed Education. No State Legislator wants to confess to being a slave master on behalf of the People of the State of Illinois, et. al. as responsible slaveholders. Under conviction, and pre-conviction under the bond and frequently the custodial detention system, We Citizens are slaveholders. We hold 2.3 million slaves, and even more indentured servants, per this "What's the whole pie?" graph of the Prison Policy Institute. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2016.html The number of privately-fully-held slaves in the United States might be 60,000 at any one timepoint (rumored), with 14,500 - 17,500 imported into private bondage per year, mostly classified as "human trafficking victims". As uniquely horrible as human trafficking is sui generis, numerically, to be cold, given the balance of argument burden i still may carry in the instant case, it is but a rounding error on the general figurative reporting number of publicly-held slaves. It is not a rounding error in-and-of itself, as an end to End in-itself, or in relation to the more careful reporting of Our publicly-held slave holdings, and the full shares that Wei all hold as Citizens in slaveries and indentured servitudes as living, breathing Institutions under Management by the States and the Federation. Quick Sources: https://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/2004/34021.htm
/info/en/?search=Human_trafficking_in_the_United_States
i could use Your help, M. Griffin, learning how to source at edit-time with more reliability, so as balance the work of disenchanting, enchanting, and in this case, dismaying > maying the reader. It is not improbable that with heightened, more transparent understanding of the XIII Amendment, We Human Beings and Citizens should still commit brethren to slavery or involuntary servitude periodically, as very well-monitored, very carefully-monitored teaching cases, even as some better "mass sublational" altarnatives emerge, iff only to keep our finger on the pulse of the old systems of justice. It is tragically true that i failed to add an additional cited reliable source to the footer of the article "(Human) Incarceration in the United States". i agree that this deserves better, more transparent referencing than what i offered in the initial commit, and would be grateful for any additional pointers. If You'd still like more academic sourcing, Wei might examine Foucault's Discipline and Punish, and the advantage and disadvantage of "sight unseen" unpenitential penalizations. Even the most cursory fair overviews of Foucault's work include this drive by the conviction-assessors to conceal the nature and brutality of the punishment application. i don't know why, but Wikipedia is shutting down a timestamped youtube link that is guid.ed like so: /BBJTeNTZtGU?t=4m57s Have you ever been in a jail or prison, M. Griffin? If You haven't, i would recommend voluntarily or, if it could be arranged, involuntarily surrendering before restraining this commit on better CORE branch.ed langauge. It's an eye-opening experience, and You'll walk away as an even more authoritative source on the right balance of langauge in this domain. My belief is that the super-majority of those experiencing what i describe as enslavement, like rape innocenters, do not always recognize what they have suffered as rape, or, in this case, enslavement: it takes time, understanding, and the disciplined use of dedazzling langauge to persuade someone suffering such an experience that they can rightfully classify their experience as rape, or slavery, but for the most transparent cases where there are no misdirecting langauge slogs to traverse, like there are of course with some kinds of least-acquaintance rape (like that with coercive but seemingly minimal step-by-step progressive force), the XIII Amendment, and the Three-fifths "Compromise". It takes time: at the beginning, the "minority" expression which is fundamentally Central, Centrist, Centripetal, and Right is hesitant, uncertain, unsure. There are rapes, and there are punitive, preventable, punishable grades of rape, and without phenomenological help of the Sexual [and Slavery] Experiences Surveys, it is hard for anyone who has lost or suffered loss of their innocence to conclude such a high-pressure, highly-affective, permanently transfigurative classification rightly. You might have trouble identifying former slaves uniformly without a survey instrument like that used in more uniformly identifying rape-as-sensitized in the Sexual Experiences Surveys for and with all literal arms involved. i've been a slave, M. Griffin. Of that, there's no remaining classificational question under Amendment XIII. Until reading XIII carefully, after prison enslavement, i was not alert to the plain meaning, because of the languistic misdirection, but now the plain reading leaps out like a flaming, double-edged sword. i've been a slaver, M. Griffin, and still am. If You live in the United States and are a Citizen, You have been and still are, too. i hope You'll help me reapply the edit without maximal further effort. If there's an appeals process i have to go thru, would You brief me on it? i do not know the right channels to go thru to revert the reversion. i'll be attentive to this until Amendment XIII is implemented as clearly as our rewrite on the feints and flak of the Three-Fifths Compromise.
(signature not on original talkpage, at either timestamp above, coming into adherence with comprehensive sigless policy) --
NOTE: From this point forward, New Entry / New Entries, beyond what exists on the Reverting Editor's Talkpage
On a sidebar to the Unconstitutionality of the present system of Bond as experienced by the Wrighter under a plain reading of the 13th Amendment's prohibition of involuntary servitude:
A plain reading of the 13th Amendment holds the experience of "Bond" in States like Illinois to be abjectly Unconstitutional.
If Citizens take flight, they take flight. See the Crito, by Socrates. Why should the State of Illinois hold a person whose only "crime" remains held to be Innocent Self-defense for 28 days of slavery, when the Socratic so held is ready to return regularly to Court without question of Flight-risk Bond, always and already made irrelevant by Education in Crito, and in ongoing acceptance of the Laws by virtue of visiting and living as a non-Citizen or Citizen within the State? The Wrighter wonders if the State Legislatures require a reading of Crito at some point before entry into the States' Legislatures. Perhaps the State of Ohio, and other States, hold the teaching of the Crito to be an illegal teaching of religion, yet then penalize all within the world of Ohio for not knowing the Crito, or, as in the Righter's case, under the *presumption* that they do not know and live their Crito, absent 'full faith and credit' for the promised presumption of innocence issued in and by State Civics Education.
Mature to Socrates, State Legislatures, as courtesy to the 13th Amendment bond protocalling gadflies, those whom present Better prototypes of what's possible Wei speak of enslavements per year; 11,000,000 annual involuntary commitments into slavery, per the [Prison Policy Initiative| http://www.prisonpolicy.org], with last-Wikipedia-Measure-meter contribution by an anonymous adam@innocentest.org. This goes deep, into States United recognition of the Right for Innocent Ex-Felons to Vote, a Constitutional Question that would have easily turned the 02000 Election from George W. Bush, the Wrighter's favored candidate (then) to Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., who narrowly lost that Election because Innocents (rehabilitated Ex-Convicts) in the State of Florida were stripped of their Suffrage Permanently, as if Suffrage is an "alienable Right" of the Certified Rehabilitated. The absence of any default process for blanket-recovery of Suffrage the day of release in the State of Florida, and all other States that trend toward such typically State-faction-favoring beliefs in the alienability of Suffrage, is evidence enuf (enough is enuf) of a Deep, Unonstitutional Violation of 'Lifelong Student Suffrage', violating the impulse drive-chain toward learning further about Whole-bodied Justice. Whether read on deontology or consequentialism, the justifications of State Legislatures must yield to the plain reading of the 13th Amendment, or the Crito, or Dewey's Theses in 'Democracy and Education', understood comprehensively.
The Writer pleads ignorance as to the whole of Dewey's Theses, with a severe sense of shame and ambaressment. This is not 'legislator labs' material; there remains a serious gap in the Riter's CORE Education.
Nonetheless, the Wrighter would persist to the point of pointing out to the existing States Legislatures that Innocent Ex-Felons wholly deserve the Inalienable Right to Vote, just as Felons under Conviction, suffering penalty, wholly deserve the Inalienable (arguably, the Wrighter concedes, but once on one major Voting Opportunity per all counts together of conviction, in the worse or worst cases of lasting conviction, to maintain the preciousness of its value, and the crucial import and impact of the 'Felon Voting Margin Rights-leverage') Right to Suffrage. Nothing will lead to faster character reform than Prisoners turning on each other, educating each other from year over year, from generation over generation, for doing something (anything so severe, under a steady, steadily monitored and adjusted sensitization curve, with a 'Majority of Convicts Enjoy All-Event Suffrage' Minimal Calmunity Rights Guarantee), so as to strip the Prisoners' Political Unions of Margin Voting Rights Power, or expand it proudly to a Full Strength Voting Bloc, in Interstate Calmpetition. The more Convicts who can Vote, the more Margin Power that Prisoners carry, the prouder its Citizens shall be, or, hold steady Populists, come to be.
In the article on Perennial Education, a Wikipedia Contributor quotes Robert Maynard Hutchins, the transformational President of The University of Chicago, the administrative primary author of what's known as the Hutchins College, who writes in the same vein:
The business of saying ... that people are not capable of achieving a good education is too strongly reminiscent of the opposition of every extension of democracy. This opposition has always rested on the allegation that the people were incapable of exercising the power they demanded. Always the historic statement has been verified: you cannot expect the slave to show the virtues of the free man unless you first set [her] free. When the slave has been set free, he has, in the passage of time, become indistinguishable from those who have always been free ... There appears to be an innate human tendency to underestimate the capacity of those who do not belong to "[Our]" group. Those who do not share our background cannot have [Our] ability. Foreigners, people who are in a different economic status, and the young seem invariably to be regarded as intellectually backward ... [1]
The plain reading of the 13th Amendment only allows some penalties, specifically enslavement and indentured servitude, *on conviction*. There is no authorization for stripping Convicts of Inalienable Right of Suffrage that We have matured to concede without nary a poll tax, which were still "bar" outs in the days that the 13th Amendment Passage occurred. No such reserves exist any longer, and a history of conviction does not count as a just Bar claim to bar Suffrage any longer.
The 13th Amendment only permits slavery and indentured servitude, which being stripped of suffrage definitionally constitutes, only after and while under penalty of conviction, not at all not before, while held concurrently 'weakly Innocent' ("Presumed Innocent", but somehow not treated Innocent) by the State while being treated as Guilty, raising such severe questions of "To bond, or not to bond. To be, or not to be. To leave a slave, or rescue a slave." struggling questions in Parents, Partners, and Peers minds when faced with responding to an Indentured Servant's Distressed "Bond Payment, please!" Call, for refusal to let the Indentured Servant open their Stored Belongings and pay a static, "community guaranteed rate" fee from their own checkbook for being, in the eyes of the Law, Innocent, but under a 'probable cause' suspicion. Other 'flight risk' reductions, like High and Higher Ethics in Education, are advised and advisable, but require training in Philosophy and Ethics, which some States, like my own home-state, the State of Ohio, strangely outlaw as the Teaching of Religion. Yes, it is Religion: CORE Religion, a Base-layer Religion taught directly and indirectly Civics Class, as well, while teaching Civic Faith, the Faith of Hh Human Being and Citizen CORE. Other financial, social sureties surely exist in these days that do not involve holding someone in slavery because (i.e. on the proximate cause) that you will not allow them access to their checkbook, and will not socially bond them to the Court with an "Agreed-upon" Social Network Innocentesting news blast (already done by the Press [a bit* wrongli], in this Innocentest's Case), in lieu of supportive parents or best friends carrying enuf (enough is enuf) Faith in Our Civil Rights and Trustworthiness to take an extremely inconvenient, expensive Emergency Plane Flight to socially bond out someone who the State is treating as if they area Guilty and Dangerous on Release, without any cause other than the State not permitting Checkbook Access, or reducing the Social Bond Out to something manageable, like a certified remote video conference from a town in North Carolina to Chicago, Illinois, just to be sure the Innocent understands their Crito, understands they must return to the right Agora for Court Apology. Persons non-local should not be subject to arbitrary detention as slaves and servants of the State because their families are located at great distance, defined in Federal Law as more than 50 miles from the record-holding site. See the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 01974, as Amended, which should be a model for treating Innocents whom the State, at that time, may believe require morally-charged education⁺. How many slave and (indentured) servant days are served to the State without Agreement on the basis of a long drive, an expensive flight, or the langauge of and protocol of the bond that violates the Presumption of Innocence, structurally the moment 'release on own cognizance' and 'own f.asset, at community-guaranteed rate issue' begins? Even Innocents accused of homicide should be released, until conviction, from Involuntary Indentured Servitude, unless it can be shown they are an imminent danger to themselves or to others. The only reason the State can, under the 13th Amendment, penalize an Innocent with enslavement or indentured servitude is in concluding Innocentesting for an Innocent | Cooperative Innocentest in a manner that secures conviction 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. As soon as any solid 'reasonable doubt' emerges in Innocentesting, the Innocentesting ends, and the prospect of penalty of slavery or indentured servitude lifts, at least as long as no further Innocenter steps forward attesting to a fresh (or still permitted, by Statute or either Constitution, Anatomic or Positive) need for Innocentesting, under formal review or, in the case of the Anatomic Constitution, sometimes, as Found reasonable by a properly-Constituted Constitutional Court, a less-than-formal re:view.
There are too many unconstitutional, bad laws to cite, all formed under 'the Abolition Myth', underpinned by a false, falsified, inaccurate independent but not interpendent reading of the XIII Amendment in Schools, under the demanding gaze of the State Legislators who do not, despite the evidence to the contrary, want textbooks to teach that Slavery still exists. On market analysis, Legislator politicians, Executive politicians, and Legislative and Executive Politician Appointees in Texas, California managing likeability generally for near-perpetual sinecure incumbencies, when available, determine the vast majority of educational materials delivered to Civics Classrooms. This is not commentary on the Offices, but on the Persons selected to occupy said Offices, at least so long as the Voices of the Slaves and Indentured Servants can be muzzled and silenced from denied Suffrage, and exclusion from the civic education and activism that comes with and anticipates the Rite of the Vote. The Principle, once accepted on Wikipedia, will propagate and percolate slowly (or perhaps quickly, in legal terms) into Calmunity Action.
Whatever the outcome of this New Section, and the determination of the ED policy of the Editors, in light of the Right and Wrong neutral-point-of-view in this prolonged but not duly prolong.ed state of State complicity over 'the Abolition Myth', and all the education charge is denies to those slavers wholly or fractionally enslaving/indenting, and those wholly enslaved/indentured, on the HSTRYical, instant, and long concerns of Justice, the Writer will want (oft-wont) and need to cite this in Court Pleadings. Others will need to consider doing the same, to form a Century Altaring Life and Liberty Movement, toward a crescendo that achieves a day where no one in the States United, anywhere, has been stripped under Our Laws, nor under their Spirit, of Suffrage, nor of the redemptions, atonements, and indiviedual, generally secretive penance that Suffrage can and does bring.
Adam D. Clayman ( talk) 19:00, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
There seems to be an assumption in the article that selling drugs is not, per se, violent, and therefore okay. i think statistics show a diminishment of longevity if not an early death for most hard drug users. Death could be in a hospital, I suppose, or at home, in bed. Maybe it is "non-violent" but it doesn't seem beneficial either. (I realize that most low level drug dealers are forced into it because of their drug habit).
(BTW. Seems like a bit of a lengthy rant, above. Can't some of that be "hidden"? Student7 ( talk) 19:06, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
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