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 Too often prison activists use statistics that are out of date, provided without citation or simply wrong.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.
April 2002
Urban Prisoners Boost Rural Clout in State Legislature
April 22, 2002
Today the Prison Policy Initiative released a reporting showing how urban prisoners are counted as rural residents for purposes of state legislative redistricting in violation of the NY and Federal Constitutions.
Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in New York
Does "7 Up" support prisoner rape?
April 19, 2002
Stop Prisoner Rape has just added an urgent action appeal for signatures denouncing a new commercial by 7 Up that trivializes prisoner rape to sell soft drinks.
Corporate-Sponsored Crime Laws
April 15, 2002
Over the past two decades, America's prison population doubled, then doubled again, before finally leveling off at about two million inmates. One result: a 50-billion-dollar corrections industry. That's bigger than tobacco. The crackdown on crime has enriched corporations that build prisons or sell products to them, prison guard unions, and police departments that use budget-fattening incentives to pursue drug criminals. In this special report, American RadioWorks correspondent John Biewen explores how some groups with vested interests work to influence public policyo helping to keep more people locked up longer.
Turning the Key: California's Prison Guards
April 11, 2002
The nation's swelling inmate population has turned imprisonment into a $50 billion-a-year industry. Those who've prospered along the way include corporations, prison guard unions, and police agencies. American RadioWorks correspondent John Biewen examines how some of those with vested interests help to shape who gets locked up and for how long.
Like any big industry, corrections is a major employer. The majority of prison workers are guards. In California, the guards' union has become one of the most powerful and politically agressive interest groups in the state. The union gives new meaning to the job of keeping inmates behind bars.
Incarceration Clock
As of --:--:-- -.-. today, there are an estimated -,---,---, people in U.S. prisons and jails. Source.
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- Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Prison Abolitionists, 1976
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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.