The Party Of "Small Government" Scores Again

Growing at a rate of about 900 inmates each week between mid-2003 and mid-2004, the nation's prison and jail population rose to 2.1 million people, or one in every 138 U.S. residents, the government reported yesterday.

By June 30, there were 48,000, or 2.3 percent, more inmates than the year before, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. [...]

In 2004, 61 percent of prison and jail inmates were of racial or ethnic minorities, the government said. An estimated 12.6 percent of all black men in their late 20s were in jails or prisons, as were 3.6 percent of Hispanic men and 1.7 percent of white men in that age group, the report said.

Posted by Eddie Tews at April 25, 2005 04:43 PM