in my travels...
http://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles1/bja/182503.txtTitle: Juveniles in Adult Prisons and Jails.
Series: A National Assessment
Author: James Austin Ph.D., Kelly Dedel Johnson, Ph.D., Maria Gregoriou,
M.A.
Published: October 2000
Subject: Juvenile corrections, jails and jail inmates
Major Findings
This study represents the most thorough examination to date of the issues
presented by youth who are incarcerated in adult facilities. The findings include
the following:
--Approximately 107,000 youth (younger than 18) are incarcerated on any
given day.
--Of these, approximately 14,500 are housed in adult facilities. The largest
proportion, approximately 9,100 youth, are housed in local jails, and some
5,400 youth are housed in adult prisons.
--Of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, 44 house juveniles (age 17 and
younger) in adult jails and prisons.
--In recent years, the number of youth in jails has escalated, while the number in
prisons has stabilized or declined.
--The actual number of youth who experience incarceration in an adult prison is
much higher than the number shown by a 1-day count, with an estimated
13,876 juvenile state prison admissions in 1997. There are no current estimates
of the number of youth admitted to jails each year.
--In terms of their legal status while incarcerated, 21 percent were held as
adjudicated juvenile offenders or pretrial detainees, and 75 percent were
sentenced as adults.
--Of the 44 state prison systems that house juveniles as adults, 18 states
maintain designated youthful offender housing units.
--In comparison with the adult prison population, a higher proportion of youth
were black (55 percent of youthful inmates versus 48 percent of adult inmates)
and were convicted of a crime against persons (57 percent of youth versus 44
percent of adult inmates).
--The vast majority of these youth are age 17 (79 percent) or age 16
(18 percent).
--Approximately 51 percent of the youthful offender population were housed in
dormitory settings, 30 percent in single cells and 19 percent in double cells.
--Health, education, and counseling programs were fairly standard, with little
evidence of efforts to customize programs for youthful offenders. A few states
operate programs specifically for the most difficult to manage juveniles
http://www.ashrafdehghani.com/articles-english/on%20pri ...
A Report on the Injustice System in the USA
Written by: Pauline (a contributing writer to IPFG’s Publication; Payaam Fadaee)
Published in Payame Fadaee, Spring edition 2002
The US ruling class has established the largest forced labour sweatshop system in the world. There
are now approximately 2 million inmates in US prisons compared to 1 million in 1994. These
prisoners have become a source of billions of dollars in profits. In fact, the US has
imprisoned a half million more people than in China which has 5 times the population.
California alone has the biggest prison system in the Western industrialized world. It has more
prisoners than France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan and Holland combined while these countries
have 11 times the population of California. According to official figures, Iran
incarcerates 220 citizens per 100,000, compared to US figures of 727. Overall, the total
"criminal justice" system in the US, including those in prison, on parole and on probation, is
approaching 6,000,000. In the last 20 years, 1000 new prisons have been built; yet they
hold double their capacity.
Prisoners, 75% of who are either Black or Hispanic, are forced to work for 20 cents an hour, some even as low as 75 cents a day. They produce everything from eyewear and furniture to
vehicle parts and computer software. This has lead to thousands of layoffs and the lowering of
the overall wage scale of the entire working class. At Soledad Prison in California, prisoners
produce work-shirtsexported to Asia as well as El Salvadoran license plates more
cheaply than in El Salvador, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. A May/99
report in the Wall Street Journal summarized that while “more expensive private-sector workers may
lose their jobs to prison labour, assigning work to the most cost-efficient producer is good for the economy.” The February/00 Wall Street Journal reported “Prisoners are excluded from employment calculation. And since most inmates are economically disadvantaged and unskilled, jailing so many people has effectively taken a big block of the nation's least-employable citizens out of the equation.”
Federal Prison Industries (FPI) whose trade name is UNICOR exports prisoner-made products as well as selling them to all federal agencies as required by federal law. FPI manufactures over 150 different products in 99 factories in 64 prisons (with 19 new ones on the way) in 30 states. It is the federal government's 35th largest contractor, just behind IBM and is exempt from any federal workplace regulations.
FPI's prison workforce produces 98% of the entire US market for equipment assembly services, 93% of paint and artist brushes, 92% of all kitchen assembly services, 46% of all personal armour, 36% of all household furnishings and 30% of all headset/microphone/speakers, etc. RW. Feb/00 FPI consistently advertises for companies "interested in leasing a ready-to-run prison industry" especially following congressional testimony in 1996 that reported a "pent-up demand for prison labour." Meanwhile, shareholders profiting from prison labour consistently lobby for the legislation of longer prison sentences in order to expand their workforce. At least 37 states have legalized the contracting out of prison labour to private corporations that have already set up operations inside state prisons. Prisons' business clients include: IBM, Boeing, Motorola Microsoft, AT&T Wireless, Texas Instruments, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom, Revlon, Macys, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores
California, with the third largest penal system in the world after China and the US as a whole, spends more on prisons than on the entire educational system. In recent years, California's university and college system cut back 8,000 employees while its Department of Corrections added 26,000. CA has built 19 prisons vs. 1 university in the past 10 years. The state spends up to $60,000 per year to incarcerate a young person, while only spending $8,000 per year to educate the same youth.
http://www.siahkal.com/english/on%20prison.htmTwin Towers Correction Facility: Largest jail in the world