33 CA prisons 33 thoughts

Here are the quotes from the Youtube video that my classmates and I just posted... and the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-5byiEu_CA

1) The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons ~ Dostoevsky
2) The United States incarcerates more of its citizens per capita than any other nation in the world
3) 1 in 99 adult US citizens is behind bars
4) 1 in 33 adult US citizens is incarcerated, on probation or on parole
5) The US has 5% of the world's population but 23% of the world's prison population
6) The US cages its citizens at a rate of 751 per 100,000
7) The world average is 125
8) The average of the nations in the European Union is 135
9) Nearly one million of those incarcerated in state and federal prisons, as well as local jails, are serving time for committing non-violent crimes
10) The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration ~ Barry McCaffrey, former US Drug Czar
11) Since 1980, incarcerated drug offenders have increased more than 1200%
12) More than half of federal prisoners are incarcerated for drug charges
13) “In 2000, the number of persons behind bars for drug offences was roughly the same as the entire US prison and jail population only twenty years earlier.” ~ Beckley Report, King’s College, London
14) “For comparative purposes, it is noteworthy that at the beginning of the Twenty-First century, there were 100,000 more persons imprisoned in the US for drug offences than the total number of prisoners in the EU, even though the EU had 100 million more citizens than the US” ~ Beckley Report, King’s College, London
15) "The drug war is primarily being waged against African American citizens…”~ Justice Policy Institute
16) In 2007 the incarceration rate for white men in the US was 773 per 100,000.
17) The incarceration rate for Hispanic men 1,747 per 100,000.
18) The incarceration rate for black men was 4,618 per 100,000
19) According to the US based Sentencing Project, nearly one in three (32%) of Afro-American men between the ages of 20 and 29 were under criminal justice control in 1995.
20) 1 in 9 black men between the age of 20-34 years old are incarcerated
21) 7% of black kids have parent incarcerated
22) In every year from 1980 to 2007 blacks were arrested for drug crimes at a rates relative to the population that were 2.8 to 5.5 times higher than whites ~ Human Rights Watch
23) 1 in 36 Hispanics over 18+ are incarcerated
24) 1 in 15 Black men over 18+ are incarcerated
25) California has the largest prison system in the US
26) 33 prisons in CA and 170,000 inmates
27) 1 in 5 California prison inmates is serving a life term
28) CA spends 9.66 billion on corrections per year, more than all its colleges and universities
29) Nearly 10 cents of every state $1 goes to CA state prisons
30) We (US or CA?) spend $35,000 per inmate and $9,000 per pupil
31) Between 1980 and 2004, the CA prison system grew from 24,569 to 159,695 inmates (550%)
32) CA is #1 in prison spending and #431 in educational spending
33) A federal three-judge panel has ruled that California is violating the Constitution by not providing adequate care to its prisoners and must release 55,000 inmates