A new report by Mother Jones, "Debt to Society," has compiled extensive data on the United States' ever-expanding prison system. With state-by-state comparisons and a series of essays about the prison-industrial complex, Mother Jones has created a great reference center to combat our national obsession with incarceration.

Particularly useful is the Incarceration Atlas. Click on a state, and you can see its incarceration rate, prison spending, education spending, and its growth in such spending over the last 20 years. It also shows the state's prison percentage of drug offenders and its incarceration rate for whites compared to non-whites.

A smattering of statistics garnered from the report
(unless otherwise stated, all statistics are for the year 2000):

Ranking of the U.S. in world's highest incarceration rates: 1

Percentage of U.S. prisoners incarcerated for drug offenses in 1980: 8
Percentage of U.S. prisoners incarcerated for drug offenses in 1998: 23

U.S. incarceration rates of Caucasians per 100,000 residents: 235
U.S. incarceration rates of African-Americans per 100,000 residents: 1815

Minnesota's ranking among U.S. highest incarceration rates: 51
Minnesota's ranking among U.S. highest education spending per capita: 1

District of Columbia's ranking among U.S. highest incarceration rates: 1
District of Columbia's ranking among U.S. highest education spending per capita: 51

Percent change from 1980 to 2000 in U.S.'s per capita spending on schools: + 32
Percent change from 1980 to 2000 in U.S.'s per capita spending on prisons: + 189
Percent change from 1980 to 2000 in Texas' per capita spending on prisons: + 401

Learn more by checking out the whole Mother Jones Prison Report at

www.motherjones.com/prisons

Back to Prisons.net