>a guy I knew who was popped last month for marijuana hung himself in
>jail rather than face trial under Florida's 'three strikes' law...his
>2 previous felony convictions on similar charges would have meant a
>mandatory 25 years to life sentence...this is sick, vile shit...
No kidding. Thanks to longer sentences, mandatory prison time for formerly non-prison offenses, and three strikes laws, the U.S. prison population continues to rise - despite falling crime rates and arrest rates. Here are some numbers to make the point (numbers are cumulative, not annual averages):
CUMULATIVE GROWTH number of prisoners, serious crimes, arrests, and total population
prisoners crimes arrests population 1980-90 +134.2% -7.7% +49.6% +9.7% 1990-97 + 61.8% -13.2% -0.6% +7.2% 1995-97 + 10.3% -13.0% -9.8% +1.8%
Note there was no visible crime boom during the 1980s or 1990s. The growth in the inmate population (and these are convited prisoners serving sentences of a year or more, not people in jail awaiting trial or doing time for minor offenses) has slowed a bit over the last few years, but it's still 5 times faster than population growth, and continues despite declines in crime rates and arrest rates.
The crime figures come from the Justice Department's annual survey, the National Criminal Victimization Survey, which asks people if they've been crime victims in the previous year. It's different from the FBI's counts, which rely on police reports, which are not comparable over time (significant changes in coverage, increased cop zeal in reporting crimes, etc.).
Doug