Jun
17
2011
A report published in the New York Times in April 2008 stated that while The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences. The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London. China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics almost 7.3 million 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 out of which almost 2.3 million were incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails. The rate of female incarceration increased fivefold to 93,031 in a two decade span ending in 2001; estimated number of women held in custody in state or federal prison, or in local jails by June 2009 rose to 201,200. So how are women coping with these new realities. In a society that prefers incarceration and brutal punishment over rehabilitation how are current or formerly incarcerated women fighting back to maintain and preserve their dignity and creating networks of mutual support and solidarity.
GUEST: Susan Burton, Founder and Executive Director of A New Way of Life Reentry Project
Find out more at: www.anewwayoflife.org
