Lock ' em up -- cont.

In answer to a reader ' s question, no, mass incarceration in the U.S. is not because we have more crime. Violent crimes are easier to count internationally, and people care about them more, so that ' s the metric the Prison Policy Institute used for this comparison. They also show the huge disparities among the states of the U.S. This is a little hard to read so just keep in mind that low and to the right means a high rate of incarceration compared to the rate of violent crime. France and Louisiana, for example, have about the same rate of violent crime, but Louisiana locks up about 8 times as many people per capita.  The states on the right of the diagram -- the states with highest rates of incarceration -- are the states of the Confederacy. Hmm. There are two main reasons for the rise of mass incarceration in the U.S. Reason 1 is " deinstitutionalization, " which obviously didn ' t produce that result since we now have more people in institutions.Beginning in the ’70s, courts ruled that mental health patients should be moved from hospitals to community based services.The states liked this idea, because they couldsave money by closing mental hospitals, but they didn ' t do the second half of the concept, which was to spend money on community based services.People were releasedwithout adequate care,housing,or social support.Manybecamehomeless, and werearrested for substance abuse, petty theft, and disruptive behavior.Available services preferentially be...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs