|
Incarceration Nation
Slaves had 3/5*
a vote, the "new slaves" get no vote
|
|
Slavery in the United States is flourishing |
|
|
Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics (1998) National Household Survey of Drug Abuse (1998) Justice Policy Institute Study (2002) The Columbia University Capital Punishement Report (2002) National Prison Project, ACLU (2001) Sentencing Project, Justice Department Study (2002) |
| ||||
 |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_787000/787416.stm
Monday, 12 June, 2000, 17:58 GMT 18:58 UK
Most US death sentences 'flawed'
Illinois has suspended the death penalty amid criticism
EXCERPS:
A major study of capital punishment in the United States says more than two-thirds of convictions are so flawed that they are overturned on appeal.And it says the fault lies in part with the prosecutors who refuse to share vital evidence with defence lawyers and juries. The study of 4,578 appeals between 1973 and 1995 showed that most cases "are so seriously flawed that they have to be done over again".
Report author Professor James Liebman said: "It's not one case, it's thousands of cases. It's not one state, it's almost all of the states.
Prof Liebman says the biggest problem is lazy and incompetent defence lawyers.
In one controversial case, death row inmate Calvin Burdine is fighting to overturn his 1983 conviction on the grounds that his court-appointed lawyer slept through much of his two-day trial.
EXCEPRTS:
DETROIT, Aug. 23 — Eighteen years ago, Eddie Joe Lloyd confessed in horrific detail to the rape and murder of 16-year-old Michelle Jackson, solving a case that had terrified this city after a wave of fatal child abductions in the area.Mr. Lloyd's account, in a six-page statement and an audiotape, was chillingly accurate. It described Michelle's Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and half-moon earrings, the red-handled knife used to threaten her, the long johns that strangled her, the dirty green bottle left in her rectum. The only false thing about the confession was the confession itself.
At a hearing on Monday, prosecutors and defense attorneys will appear together before the judge who sentenced Mr. Lloyd to life in prison in 1985, lamenting as he did so Michigan's lack of the death penalty. They plan to present DNA evidence to show that Mr. Lloyd is the wrong man and request his release.
EXCERPS:
WASHINGTON - Gov. Parris N. Glendening took a courageous step when he put a moratorium on executions in Maryland, as Gov. George Ryan did in Illinois in 2000.Mr. Glendening's action signals mounting concern about flaws in our death penalty system: the 101st death row inmate has now been exonerated; a Columbia University study has found that from 1973 to 1995, more than two-thirds of death penalty convictions were reversed on appeal based on serious, reversible error; and late last month in New York, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff announced that he was seriously considering finding the federal death penalty unconstitutional because so many death row inmates have been found innocent.
2001 Associated Press
Karen Gullo, Associated Press Writer
``We have 25 percent of the world's prisoners but we're only 5 percent of the world's population,'' said Kara Gotsch of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project, which advocates alternatives to incarceration.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Most drug offenders in state prisons are black males with no history of violence or high-level drug dealing, an interest group says.The Sentencing Project, which advocates for alternatives to incarceration, says that just over half of these state inmates -- 58 percent, or 124,885 people -- are nonviolent offenders.
EXCERPTS:
WASHINGTON (AP) - One in every 32 adults in the United States was behind bars or on probation or parole by the end of last year, according to a government report Sunday that found a record 6.6 million people in the nation's correctional system.The number of adults under supervision by the criminal justice system rose by 147,700, or 2.3 percent, between 2000 and 2001, the Justice Department reported. In 1990, almost 4.4 million adults were incarcerated or being supervised.
2001 Associated Press
Karen Gullo, Associated Press Writer
Racial disparities in prison populations were profound, the report showed:
Black males were incarcerated in record numbers - a total of 791,600 black men were in prison, a new high. Nearly one in eight black males age 20 to 34 were in prison on any given day, the report said.
Racial minorities account for 79 percent of all state prison drug offenders. The total number of prisoners in state correctional facilities was 1,242,962 as of June 2000. Eleven states reported a decline in their inmate populations from 1999 to 2000, including two of the nation's largest state prison systems - California and New York.
EXCERPTS:
WASHINGTON -- Percentage increases in spending for Texas prisons has far outstripped state spending hikes for higher education since the mid-1980s, according to a report released Wednesday.The study, by the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington advocacy group, also showed Texas now has more black men in state prisons than in state colleges and universities.
Texas was not alone in seeing its spending on prisons rise along a steep curve in the past decade and a half, while money set aside for higher education rose much more slowly, according to the study.
EXCERPS:
The number of people in the U.S. correctional system hit a record 6.6 million — more than 3 in every 100 adults_ last year, the Justice Department says.Whites accounted for 55 percent of those on probation, while blacks made up 31 percent. Among those behind bars, however, 46 percent of those incarcerated were black and 36 percent were white.
EXCERPS:
(IDG) -- In the 2000 presidential election, Florida disqualified thousands of voters because a computerized database search identified them as felons who were ineligible to participate in the election.Many of those voters weren't, in fact, felons. They had been charged with misdemeanor crimes and should have been eligible to vote.
