Our Justice System:

Just the Facts

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§        Prisons and jails added more than 1,000 inmates each week for a year during 2005, putting one of every 136 US residents (or nearly 2.2 million people) behind bars.

 

§        A 2004 Sentencing Project report found Wisconsin ranked sixth in the nation for racial disparity in incarceration. Wisconsin had the nation’s highest rate of prison and jail incarceration for African Americans.

 

§        Wisconsin will spend nearly a billion dollars on prisons in 2007. It is the single largest expenditure in the state budget next to education.

§         Wisconsin’s prison population has increased 300% in the past 15 years.

§        African Americans are imprisoned in Wisconsin at nearly 40 times the rate of whites for non-violent drug offenses.

§        A landmark RAND study estimated that money spent on treatment for people with federal cocaine charges would reduce serious crime against property & persons about 15 times more effectively than incarceration. 

§        Department of Corrections data shows 83 percent of Wisconsin’s prison population has an alcohol or other drug abuse programming need.

§        Rock County led Wisconsin in 2005 in waiving youth 16 and under to adult court.

§        Wisconsin has the highest rate in the nation of minority youth incarceration in adult prison.

§        A $22 million annual investment in treatment alternatives will save Wisconsin taxpayers more than $30 million a year in incarceration costs.

 

Justice Overcoming Borders (JOB), 3/1/07