The United States now
has more prisoners than farmers. According to the Washington, DC-based
Justice Policy Institute the United States prison population recently
topped 2 million.* The statistics are shocking, especially given that
the US accounts for a quarter of the world's prisoners, but only 5%
of the world's population.
According to the last farm census, there were 1.9 million farms in
the US (a farm is defined as any place selling $1,000 or more of agricultural
products). In other words, there are more people behind bars in the
US than there are behind the wheel of a tractor.
While some would argue that the US criminal justice system and industrial
agriculture have little in common, the statistics reflect social systems
in profound crisis: - Number of US farms - 1,911,859 - 2.5% of US
farms are operated by blacks and other races. - Direct federal payments
to farmers in 1999: $23 billion - US prison population - 2,000,000
- Roughly half of the state and federal prisoners incarcerated in
the US are African Americans, although they make up only 13% of the
US population. - The cost of incarceration: approximately $40 billion
per year.
*Jason Ziedenberg and Vincent Schiraldi, Justice
Policy Institute, The
Punishing Decade: Prison and Jail Estimates at the Millennium, December,
1999.
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