America has nearly 1.5million prisoners behind bars - more than any country

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America has nearly 1.5million prisoners behind bars - more than any country in the world - despite efforts to reduce numbers!

* The imprisonment rate for all state and federal prisoners decreased 2.1% in 2017
* Despite the decline, America has the world's largest known incarcerated population in the world - it's unclear how many
   prisoners are in China 
* The overall incarceration rate in the U.S. has declined 13% since 2007, but still remains 236% higher than it was in
   1978, according to federal data

Despite bipartisan efforts to reform the criminal justice system and reduce the length of sentences, the number of people in American prisons has seen only a slight decline in recent years, according to data from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The imprisonment rate for all state and federal prisoners decreased 2.1 percent year-on-year in 2017, the most recent year for which data is available.

In 2017 there were 440 sentenced prisoners per 100,000 Americans, down from 450 in 2016.

Despite the overall decline, the U.S. remains the nation with the largest known incarcerated population in the world (it's unclear how many prisoners are in China).

Overall, the state and federal prison population decreased by 18,700 prisoners from 2016-2017, to a total of 1,489,400 at the end of 2017 – a 1.2 percent decrease.

'If we keep working on the kinds of criminal justice reforms that we're doing right now, it's going to take us 75 years to reduce the population by half,' said Rachel Barkow, a sentencing expert at New York University School of Law and author of 'Prisoners of Politics: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration.'

'The kinds of reforms we're seeing now are really modest,' she told The New York Times. 'I'm glad were getting them. But this is not transformative yet.'

The overall incarceration rate in the U.S. has declined 13 percent since 2007, but still remains 236 percent higher than it was in 1978.

The decrease over the past decade was largely thanks to a 2014 decision by the U.S. Sentencing Commission to reduce sentencing guidelines for drug crimes – a change that accounts for about a third of the decline from 2016-2017.

However, a disparity remains from one state to the next in the prison and jail populations: some have seen significant reductions, while others continue to see the number of incarcerated people climb year after year.

New York, New Jersey and Connecticut all saw significant drops, largely due to policy changes. For example, some states have reclassified some crimes that were previously felonies as misdemeanors, while others have given sentencing judges more discretion.

California stands apart for having one of the biggest reductions in the past 10 years, which was the result of a U.S. Supreme Court order in 2011 that the state must remove 30,000 inmates from its overcrowded prison system.

The state still had the second-highest number of incarcerated people in the nation (131,039) in 2017, behind only Texas (162,523).

Florida ranked third, with 98,504 incarcerated people in 2017.

Nationwide, 55 percent of state prisoners were serving sentences for violent offenses by the end of 2016, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

That's despite a dramatic drop in the nation's violent crime rate – an indication that America has such a large prison population not just because it locks so many people up, but because it keeps them incarcerated for longer periods of time.

The U.S. accounts for roughly 4 percent of the world's population, though it has more than a third of the people serving sentences worldwide, according to an international survey entitled, 'Life Imprisonment: A Global Human Rights Analysis.'

As prisoners age within the system, the cost of caring for them grows – and more than 10 percent of inmates were age 55 or older in 2017.

Racial disparities in the prison population persist, though the rate of African Americans in prison decline by nearly a third in the past 10 years.

Still, African American men serve prison sentences at almost six times the rate of white men, while black women are incarcerated at roughly double the rate of white women.

Nearly half of U.S. adults have had a relative in jail or prison
Nearly half (45 percent) of all American adults have an immediate family member who has been incarcerated, according to a new report.

That amounts to roughly 113 million people who have been touched by mass incarceration in the United States, according to the survey of 4,041 Americans.

The research was done by FWD.us, a non-profit established by American business and tech leaders advocating for criminal justice and immigration reform, in partnership with Cornell University.

Right now, an estimated 6.5 million Americans have an immediate family member in jail or prison. And U.S. jail and prison populations have swelled to four times what they were in 1980, with about 1.5 million people in state and federal prisons on any given day in America.

[Sawman214]

A lot of people with too much time on their hands

[vickysue]

It is so sad  that so many  are in prison.  If we did not have  the illegals that are in prison it would not be  so bad. But here  they are and commit a lot of crimes.  There are just  as many whites as blacks in prison. I think if  all of these men had to work  we would not have as many.  I think to some it is a way of life, 3 meals a day a work out room, computers, free medical, library and the list goes on. the main think is they  don't have to do anything. I think  the chain gang would still work. Make little  rocks out of  big  rocks and a lot of them would not want to go back. Hard work.

[paints]

We lock people up rather than deal with why they broke the law in the first place. 

[Mizzkizz7]

That's good! as long as bad people are off the streets so they can't hurt anyone.

[mamatygress]

My brother is in prison for dwi's while on meth.  I believe that being locked up was the only thing that was going to get him clean. 

[elvisdo]

This is big business along with pharmaceuticals. It's hard to give up the cash cow.

[dreamyxo]

The whole system needs to be reformed but it seems like no one wants to do anything about it.

[king4cash]

How do you know how much is in countries like North Korea or China or Russia. Please list them when you give out your opinion...

[MichelleHW101]

My grandfather used to say instead of sticking criminals in prisons, especially killers/gang members, they should be forced, like the old drafts, to go into the military then shipped to a foreign country to fight.  Honestly, I think that would not only reduce the people in prison, but would take the whole 'I'm a badass' out of them that would make them think twice before doing another crime.     

[countrygirl12]

So we have a lot of criminals.

[countrygirl12]

My grandfather used to say instead of sticking criminals in prisons, especially killers/gang members, they should be forced, like the old drafts, to go into the military then shipped to a foreign country to fight.  Honestly, I think that would not only reduce the people in prison, but would take the whole 'I'm a badass' out of them that would make them think twice before doing another crime.     

Well if we were in the middle of a war. But we aren't.  And if you are sending people to defend our country you don't need some pansy drug addict criminal to do it.

I think all they would have to do is stop the "I have rights" and make prison tough again. Bread and water will keep you alive.  You want to eat then obey the law.

[aflyingmonkey]

If the figures aren't per capita in relation to other countries the numbers are meaningless statistically.
America has a population of 350 million, so of course we would have more prisoners than say Canada whose population is only 35 million, pretty much the same population as just California.

The percentage of prisoners in a country per 100,000 of the population of that country, would give a better reading if America's prison population is really better or worse than the rest of the world.

[nmbrown863]

Wow, that is a crazy high number.

[tantricia44]

So many ppl behind bars some with crimes that shouldn't be considered life sentences, using another space & tax payer's monies to support a prisoner. I wish there was a way for prisons to be more constructed to be a form of community with less dangerous criminals running the facilities in concert with the guards, & police.