Public views of punishment for crimes have changed over the centuries. History has its clement and its stormy seasons, and during times of war, famine, and disorder, gains made in peace and plenty are sometimes lost. Yet generally over time most societies have moved from the extraction of personal or family justice—vengeful acts such as blood feuds or the practice of "an eye for an e…
According to Lynn Bauer of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) in Justice Expenditure and Employment in the United States, 2001 (May 2004), the total amount spent on corrections at the federal, state, and local levels rose from about $8.9 billion in 1982 to $57 billion in 2001, an increase of roughly 540%. During the same time period, total expenditures for police protection also increased …
Corrections institutions are organized in tiers by level of government and, at each level (federal, state, and local), specific types of institutions provide corrections functions based on the relative severity of the offenses committed. The most restrictive form of corrections is incarceration in a prison. Both the federal and the state governments operate their own prison systems; within the fed…
In Prisoners in 2003 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2004), Paige M. Harrison and Allen J. Beck reported that the prison population increased 2.1% between 2002 and 2003, although at a lower rate than the average annual growth rate of 3.4% since 1995. According to Harrison and Beck, the number of individuals under state jurisdiction grew by 20,370 (1.6%) between 2002 and 200…
In 2003 some 1.3 million men and 92,785 women were serving sentences in state and federal prisons, according to Paige M. Harrison and Allen J. Beck in Prisoners in 2003 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2004). (See Table 5.1.) Expressed in percentages of total prisoners 35% were non-Hispanic whites, 44% non-Hispanic African-Americans, 19% were Hispanics, and 1.9% were of other races (Asians, American Indians, Alaskan Natives, Native Hawaiians, and other Pacific Islanders). …
Data on the health status of inmates in prisons and jails are not routinely collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). There are some exceptions. Surveys of prisoners conducted at intervals include questions about health. Since 1990 BJS has also collected data on the prevalence of Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) and has reported its findings on an annual basis. Estimates of prisoners' health conditions were developed by the Nationa…
In most states offenders age eighteen or younger are considered juveniles and fall under the jurisdiction of juvenile courts rather than adult criminal courts. However, all states will prosecute juveniles as adults under some circumstances. According to the National Center for Juvenile Justice (http://ncjj.servehttp.com/NCJJWebsite/main.htm) in 2005:…
Most of the correctional population of the United States—those under the supervision of correctional authorities—are walking about freely. They are people on probation or people on parole. According to Lauren E. Glaze and Seri Palla in Probation and Parole in the United States, 2003 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, July 2004), 4,024,087 people were on probation, 774,588…
Sentencing policies have changed since the 1970s. Prison populations began increasing in 1973 from a rate of ninety-six prisoners per 100,000 adult residents in the United States to an estimated 482 per 100,000 in 2003. (See Table 4.3 in Chapter 4.) Between 1925 and 1973 the ninety-six per 100,000 rate was one of the lowest, matched, for instance, by the rate in 1928. The average imprisonment rate…
Most prisons and jails are associated with federal, state, and local government, and adhere to the same general sets of laws and regulations. There are some exceptions, however. A few organizations and areas within the United States have specialized prison facilities of their own. There are also some types of prisoners, such as immigrants and death row inmates, that are handled differently from mo…
In 1871 a Virginia court, in Ruffin v. Commonwealth (62, Va. 790, 1871), commented that a prisoner "has, as a consequence of his crime, not only forfeited his liberty, but all his personal rights except those which the law in its humanity accords to him. He is for the time being the slave of the state." Eighty years later, in Stroud v. Swope (187 F. 2d. 850, 9th Circuit, 1951), a fed…