02/12/0104:18
| | Overincarceration, Drugs and Race |
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from Human Rights watch
Are we living in a police state?
"The world's largest prison population continued to grow because of punitive criminal justice policies that mandated harsh prison terms even for minor nonviolent offenses and increased the length of sentences, and because of increases in the number of inmates returned to prison for parole violations. In August, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed that the number of men and women behind bars in the U.S. at the end of 1999 exceeded two million and the rate of incarceration had reached 690 inmates per 100,000 residents-a rate Human Rights Watch believed to be the highest in the world (with the exception of Rwanda). The Department of Justice also revealed that approximately 1.5 million children-2 percent of the country's children-had a parent in state or federal prison. "
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