New Heights,
I don't frequent huffpo or dailykos, so sorry to disappoint you. When I want to discuss political and/or sociological articles I do so at metafilter, where members tend to discuss topics from every political and social angle rather than simply ape whatever the talking point du jour is. I learned early on at jclist to stay far away from the political postings here, so I avoid them. It's infuriating that racist axe grindings show up constantly in what look like otherwise informative (and innocuous) post topics.

Grove Path, I am well aware of that article from the NYT and discussed it at length with many knowledgeable people who study social phenomena and statistics for a living. If you'd like to view an examination and discussion of that article with cites from related research (and some personal experiences thrown in for good measure) you can find a good one at metafilter here:
http://www.metafilter.com/63665/Why-a ... -many-Americans-in-prison

I don't see any reason to revisit the question of why the statistics are as they are in a thread about a break-in in my neighborhood. I mean, JC on a pogostick!

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They went to the same place all the folks who were defending Sarah Palin went.

The NY Times is a rascist right wing propaganda news outlet.
NOT !


What happened to all the attackers on this thread?

Greenville, Propscene & Wideman where did you go?

Isn't this where the liberals start correcting my spelling and punctuation and calling me ignorant because I left out an apostrophe?

I want to point out that the article is from the New York Times - and I must say that those are pretty sobering facts.

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unfortunately, the truth seems to really hurt some people on this board.

How is pointing out FACTS considered rascist? These aren't opinions.

propscene let's have an educated debate backed with facts and statistics and hold off on the name calling.

If you want a website where everyone exprresses your points of view go to huffington post or daily kos.

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I not sure if you are going to puke or consider this useful information or just a racist article !

Fact and Figures Hurt !

U.S. Imprisons One in 100 Adults, Report Finds

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: February 29, 2008

For the first time in the nation?s history, more than one in 100 American adults are behind bars, according to a new report.


The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 adult Hispanic men is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 adult black men is, too, as is one in nine black men ages 20 to 34.

The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that one in 355 white women ages 35 to 39 is behind bars, compared with one in 100 black women.

The report?s methodology differed from that used by the Justice Department, which calculates the incarceration rate by using the total population rather than the adult population as the denominator. Using the department?s methodology, about one in 130 Americans is behind bars.

The increase in the number of prisoners over the last 18 months, the Pew report says, pushed the national adult incarceration rate to just over one in 100.

?We aren?t really getting the return in public safety from this level of incarceration,? said Susan Urahn, the center?s managing director.

But Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and a former federal judge, said the Pew report considered only half of the cost-benefit equation and overlooked the ?very tangible benefits: lower crime rates.?

In the past 20 years, according the Federal Bureau of Investigation, rates of violent crimes fell by 25 percent, to 464 per 100,000 people in 2007 from 612.5 in 1987.

?While we certainly want to be smart about who we put into prisons,? Professor Cassell said, ?it would be a mistake to think that we can release any significant number of prisoners without increasing crime rates. One out of every 100 adults is behind bars because one out of every 100 adults has committed a serious criminal offense.?

The United States imprisons more people than any other nation in the world. China is second, with 1.5 million people behind bars. The gap is even wider in percentage terms.

Germany imprisons 93 out of every 100,000 people, according to the International Center for Prison Studies at King?s College in London. The comparable number for the United States is roughly eight times that, or 750 out of 100,000.

Ms. Urahn said the nation could not afford the incarceration rate documented in the report.

?We tend to be a country in which incarceration is an easy response to crime,? she said. ?Being tough on crime is an easy position to take, particularly if you have the money. And we did have the money in the ?80s and ?90s.?

Now, with fewer resources available, the report said, ?prison costs are blowing a hole in state budgets.?

On average, states spend almost 7 percent of their budgets on corrections, trailing only health care, education and transportation.

In 2007, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers, states spent $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections. That is up from $10.6 billion in 1987, a 127 percent increase when adjusted for inflation. With money from bonds and the federal government included, total state spending on corrections last year was $49 billion. By 2011, the Pew report said, states are on track to spend an additional $25 billion.

It cost an average of $23,876 dollars to imprison someone in 2005, the most recent year for which data were available. But state spending varies widely, from $45,000 a year in Rhode Island to $13,000 in Louisiana.

?Getting tough on crime has gotten tough on taxpayers,? said Adam Gelb, the director of the public safety performance project at the Pew center. ?They don?t want to spend $23,000 on a prison cell for a minor violation any more than they want a bridge to nowhere.?

The cost of medical care is growing by 10 percent annually, the report said, and will accelerate as the prison population ages.

About one in nine state government employees works in corrections, and some states are finding it hard to fill those jobs. California spent more than $500 million on overtime alone in 2006.

The number of prisoners in California dropped by 4,000 last year, making Texas? prison system the nation?s largest, at about 172,000. But the Texas Legislature last year approved broad changes to the state?s corrections system, including expansions of drug treatment programs and drug courts and revisions to parole practices.

?Our violent offenders, we lock them up for a very long time ? rapists, murderers, child molesters,? said State Senator John Whitmire, Democrat of Houston and the chairman of the Senate?s Criminal Justice Committee. ?The problem was that we weren?t smart about nonviolent offenders. The Legislature finally caught up with the public.?

Mr. Whitmire gave an example.

?We have 5,500 D.W.I offenders in prison,? he said, including people caught driving under the influence who had not been in an accident. ?They?re in the general population. As serious as drinking and driving is, we should segregate them and give them treatment.?

The Pew report recommended diverting nonviolent offenders away from prison and using punishments short of reincarceration for minor or technical violations of probation or parole. It also urged states to consider earlier release of some prisoners.

Before the recent changes in Texas, Mr. Whitmire said, ?we were recycling nonviolent offenders.?

Half the time this board is a source of useful information, half the time it makes me want to puke. This would be one of those latter times.

I wonder how many people in JC give up on contributing to these threads or don't contribute to the extent they could (thereby improving the jclist community and in turn the non-virtual JC community) because at least half of the postings here are stormfront racist garbage.

It's odd, how come I never meet the fat-ass-bikes, heights, new heights DBs in the real Jersey City? (And by odd, I mean great!)

Are they too busy holed up in their dark smelly rooms cruising jclist and Stormfront, leaving their chairs only to go to the fridge or visit the loo (probably well-stocked with Soldier of Fortune mags)?

Exactly , how have those programs been doing?

If the minorities become the majority by next generation , based on my stats we will need some pretty big jails.

Hopefully these groups will have figured it out by that time.

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I'm all for pointing out facts and figures and highlighting who or what is the root cause of any crime or issue so we can better resource or increase needs to those areas or community groups for positive solutions and outcomes.

I have also read that the minority groups will be the majority, by the next generation of Americans.

Over 50% of the approx 16,000 murders in the US last year were commited by african americans and 95% of african american murdered were killed by other african americans

Are you blaming racial profiling for that too?

The quicker the excuses stop and people start taking responsibility in their own communities the sooner this mess will be resolved.

please refrain from calling me a rascist in your rebuttals and present facts only please. Also please refrain from op eds and unfounded studies by liberal professors.

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Are these stats a self-fulfilling prophecy? If you were an employer, police officer or judge you would tend to be biased against the "Profiled" (happens everyday) Look at laws like Rockefeller Drug laws

"The stark racial impact of drug law enforcement in New York also raises fundamental questions about the state?s commitment to equal protection of the laws and racial equality: ninety-four percent of the people sentenced under the drug laws are black or Hispanic. Black men are admitted to prison on drug charges at eleven times the rate of white men. Most drug arrests occur in lower income, primarily minority urban areas, even though whites use drugs at approximately the same rate as blacks. "

These type of written and unwritten laws have been a burden to the "Profiled" for over 400 years. Self-fulfilling prophecy?

With any group of people 90% are good normal and decent and 10% are something else. Again this is with any group.

I'll stick to facts and data from here on out. Based on these numbers I made the assumption.

You can call people rascists and stick your head in the sand but that won't change these stats. Spending more time on solving the problems might.

http://www.bop.gov/news/quick.jsp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_d ... hics_of_the_United_States

Greenville- over reacting a little bit? Do you know this guy?

If the Journal could report the race etc of suspects or criminals I wouldn't need to assume.

The only Dwayne I ever knew was from a tv show and the name is predominantly used by African Americans.

That ties back to my racial profiling comment.

Was it a poor joke maybe calling me the biggest rascist on the board is over the top.

please read below

http://reginaldshepherd.blogspot.com/ ... whats-in-name-part-2.html

Your the worst racist pig I have ever seen on this board. What a scumbag!!!

Somebody better give this Dwayne the memo

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Correct! It was not Freudian but very conscious. Dwayne? Lucky his name was not Obama. I agree 5 warning shots in the back would be in order.

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Wow.

Not a freudian slip , just an assumption. Chances are i'm right. By the way his first name is Dwayne. Didnt you ever see that show "Whats happenin" ?

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A freudian slip? (The article never mentioned race!)

Seriously though, I was hoping for some TV action. Maybe a fist fight, a chase, then the take down. Maybe next time.

What exactly are cops paid to do ? Siht if anyone on JClist saw a crime, I'd bet most would call the cops to do their job !
No tap on the back from me but I'm grateful he didn't look the other way !

I've helped the cops catch 7 burglars in 4 different incidents over the years and no article, no city key, no nothing. Sheeesh. Hows about a plastic badge?

Im sure the only reason the cop spotted them was because he used racial profiling. Its unfair that the yuppie burglars never get caught because they dont "look suspicious".

seriously though, Hats off to investigator Sean Connors.JC cops dont get enough credit. Its a shame these dirtbags will be on the street in a month or so.

Next time they might break in while someone is home and hurt or kill someone.

Off-duty cop spots burglars while handing out crime flyers

by Michaelangelo Conte/The Jersey Journal Wednesday August 27, 2008, 8:32 PM

An off-duty Jersey City cop handing out anti-burglary flyers in the Heights on Tuesday went beyond dispensing tips and helped cops nab a couple of burglars, officials said.

"He literally went into a hallway at a place where I just put burglary flyers," Investigator Sean Connors said yesterday, referring to Dwayne Thorpe, 39, who was arrested with Ericka M. Coley, 21, both of Garfield.

Connors said he was handing out flyers on Thorne Street near Kennedy Boulevard when around 3 p.m. he saw a couple drive by twice, suspiciously eyeing residences.

The pair then sat on the porch of a residence, and Thorpe ducked into the vestibule, Connors said. Thorpe came back out, said something to the woman, and then climbed up a handrail and through a first floor-window, Connors said.

When Thorpe came out the window and the couple drove off, but Connors said he followed in his car while communicating with police on his cell phone.

At Summit Avenue and Sanford Place police cruisers surrounded the car and Thorpe got out saying "You got me. You got me," police reports said.

Thorpe has done three stints in state prison on five convictions for burglary and three for eluding police, state corrections officials said, adding he was last released less than a month ago.

Connors has run for elected office on several occasions, most recently losing to Fourth District Freeholder Eliu Rivera.