Research on the crime control industry
Prisonsucks.com is a clearinghouse for useful, verifiable statistics about the crime control industry. Too often prison activists use statistics that are out of date, provided without citation or simply wrong. One of these days the public will start listening to prison activists, so let's be prepared to win without being sidetracked by arguments over defective statistics. In some cases, the numbers we need don't exist. In others, the facts exist but activists don't know where to find them. Now you do.
December 2001
Research links database software available
December 18, 2001
The links database is running a modified version of Links 2.0 from Gossamer Threads. We combined several existing mods and then had to make some additional changes. If our modifications would be useful to you in managing your own site, you can download them from our software page.
CGI Assistance needed for Prison XML aggregator
December 16, 2001
The Prison Policy Initiative is looking to build an XML aggregator to combine and redistribute headlines from from prison reform websites. (There are only a few sites besides PrisonSucks.com producing in the XML format, and the PPI is encouraging other organizations to produce news in this format.)
The biggest thing holding this project back from proceeding at internet speed is lack of programming help. So help if you can. Write to the Prison Policy Initiative. Prison organizations who desire to participate should also click the link below to learn more.
Put links to new research on your website!
December 14, 2001
You can now keep your website automatically up-to-date with the 5 newest reports from our database. We have the links available in XML/RSS format as well as a simpler javascript version that you can just paste into your page. Please let us know if you install a research feed or if you have any problems.
International Research Editors Needed
December 12, 2001
We cannot effectively index prison research for countries other than the U.S. If you would like to edit a page to list the research relevant to prisons in your country, send us an email. While you need to be familar with the research agencies in your country, you do not need HMTL or programming skills as you can edit the page through your browser.
PrisonSucks now a part of the Prison Policy Initiative
December 8, 2001
The Prison Policy Initiative produces accurate, timely and accessible statistics and reports for use by activists, journalists and policy makers on prison and responses to crime. Our work starts with the idea that the racial, gender and economic disparities between the prison population and the larger society represent the grounds for a
democratic catastrophe. We are working to develop a conception of prison reform based not merely in opposing a rising rate of incarceration, but in the need to evolve to a better way of addressing social problems than warehousing our citizens in cages.
Incarceration Clock
As of --:--:-- -.-. today, there are an estimated -,---,---, people in U.S. prisons and jails. Source.
Stay informed
Keep informed of new reports & factsheets added to PrisonSucks.com by signing up to receive new links by email. The list will be kept confidential.
What's new on the research page:
See older items.
What's new on the factsheets page:
See older items.
Other site features:
- Syndicate our research links. (Put them on your webpage.) It can be as simple as copying this code into your webpage.
- Instructions on how to put the incarceration clock on your website.
- Download our software mods for controlling a links database.
Electronic books:
- Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Prison Abolitionists, 1976
- Limits to Pain by Nils Christie, 1981
Other resource lists:
Like the site? Love the book!
Written by the editor of this site and co-published with the Western
Prison Project, The Prison Index: Taking the Pulse of the Crime Control
Industry is the first index of statistics about our nation's criminal
justice system ever published. Containing 611 facts and 17 graphs and
charts, this 48-page volume presents, in black-and-white, the state of
crime control in America. Read more and order online.