One of the primary things which caught my eye was the fact that roughly 3,700 juveniles, or 90% of the juvenile offender population within jails, were “tried or awaiting trial in adult court.” I was under the impression that juveniles weren’t often tried as adults. I figured the courts would be much more likely to give a kid a second chance rather than an adult, but the figures show otherwise. Furthermore, out of 10 inmates of jails in the US, a total of 6 weren’t there because of a conviction, but rather because they were awaiting action from a court pending their current charge. In other words, 6 out of 10 inmates are sitting in jails because they’re waiting on the court process to take place. It’s safe to assume that they’re there because they couldn’t or didn’t make bail, so they’re stuck in jail until the court process takes place. What’s more, since the year 2000, approximately 95% of the jail population has been due to an increase of up to 117,700 inmates who sit in the unconvicted population. One can assume, then, that bail isn’t a reasonable option for most offenders. It would make more sense, economically and socially, to decrease bail amounts to proportionately match a percentage loss imposed on any given offender. In other words, if there are two offenders who commit the same crime, yet offender A earns ten times more than offender B, and they are both given a bail amount of $25,000 to meet, offender A will meet the bail and feel little impact and offender B will remain in jail. It makes more sense to base bail off of a percentage amount rather than a flat amount. If both offenders are given a bail amount of 20% proportionate to their income, they’ll both feel the hit almost equally. It’s also interesting to see the change in jail intake in response to the change of a presidency. During the presidency of George W. Bush, jail inmate populations steadily rose up until around the end of his leadership. Once president Obama took office, the jail inmate populations steadily dropped until 2012 when they started to plateau. It’s safe to assume that the correlation between presidential policies and these population changes are is not coincidental by any means. President Bush is well known for following in the footsteps of prior republican leaderships when it comes to established policy on drugs within the United States. President Obama’s policy, however, is almost a polar opposite of the policy imposed by Bush. Obama encouraged decriminalization and rehabilitation of drug offences and offenders rather than incarceration and the notorious mandatory minimum sentences imposed in response thereof. It will be very interesting to see the reports in 2019 and 2020 concerning the effects imposed by Trump’s drug and crime policies, which aren’t yet fully defined. Even more so, with the appointment of Justice Gorsuch in April. Another interesting find in this report is the fact that almost half of all jail inmates were being held in less than 10% of the total number of jails within the United States. The biggest jails in the nation, which are defined as having an average daily population of 1,000 or more inmates, held 47% of the total population of inmates yet accounted for only 6% of all jail jurisdictions in the US. The smallest jail jurisdictions pale in comparison, holding 3% of the inmate population yet accounting for 38% of jail jurisdictions. This just goes to show the great disparity of crime diffusion within our country. -TheTurk456
The thing that sparked my interest was that the chart in figure one shows that we had a large increase in jail population up to 2008 and then it started to decrease in 2009 and went back and forth till it started to rise again in 2014. The reason this is interesting is that I want to know what changed from 2009 to 2014 that made our jail population start to increase again. Why couldn’t we just keep decreasing everything? Another thing that was shocking to me was how the female population in prisons went up by 18% between 2010 and 2014. This is shocking because not only is the female population increasing but the male population is decreasing so are females getting in trouble for the same crimes males are or are the males starting the get away with things more? I don't quite understand how these numbers can be changing this much and why males numbers are decreasing and females are increasing what causes this to happen? What has happened in society that we just don't know about? Another thing i also found shocking was that the juveniles held as adults and as juveniles their numbers have decreased over the years as well. It was surprising to me because from the research I have seen more teens are getting busted for marijuana now a days rather than adults so how has the population of juveniles gone down as well? Another huge thing I found interesting was the amount of people that were convicted versus the amount unconvicted. The amount of people unconvicted is almost double the amount of convicted in 2014. How can that many people be unconvicted of a crime? Was it because they actually didn’t do the crime or did they just get off because the judge let them off? Another thing that i found was the percent of capacity occupied in jails from 2000 to 2014. It was weird to me that the percent went up then down over the years. The reason I feel is because our jails have expanded so much that there isn’t enough people to completely fill them so it’s not that there is a decrease in people in the jails but rather it’s an increase in the size of the jail. Just like the amount of people in jail fluctuated so did the amount of supervised outside a jail facility starting at 65,000 in the year 2000, then peaking in 2008 with 72,800 and starting to decrease, and then picking up again in 2014 with 63,000. All of the numbers in these charts show that after 2008 the number of people in jail decreased drastically but then started to pick back up I must not understand what happened through those years but why did the population decrease so far then pick right back up what changed in 5 years? Are we just starting to arrest for everything now? People need to look back into what happened when the population decreased and see why it did then see if there is a way we can do that today to decrease our over-crowded jails. -CarlBaconWho456
Part 1: It looks like the jail population is starting to make some progress in bringing their population numbers down. Going from 785,000 to 744,600 in 6 years is not to bad and hopefully we can keep that rate of decrease going. Any kind of progress is better then nothing. What I thought was interesting though is the huge increase in female jail inmates, I mean 18% in four years is pretty bad and apparently it's been growing by 1.6% since 2005! It's weird that the female jails have increased while the males have decreased. Yea .3% is practically nothing but it is still a steady decrease that's been happening for 9 years. Silver lining to the increase in female jail inmates might be that women are starting to be treated more as equals to men. In all seriousness though this is an issue that will need to be dealt with especially with all the proof showing that most women offenders tend to be victims themselves before becoming criminals. Another weird thing that caught my attention was that since 2000, 95% of the jail inmate growth was due to unconvicted inmates. Why has so much of the increase in population come from that? Is it just a bunch of courts with to many cases? I know I don't know nearly enough about the law and all the hoops that have to be jumped through to actually convict somebody but I wonder if their are any ways to cut down the amount of time unconvicted people stay in jail or just an idea here but for the people who are unconvicted yet of non violent crimes who are not a flight risk or anything could start being put on house arrest. So at least that way it helps the jails not get overpopulated. Interesting that when it comes to race white inmates increased from 2010 to 2014 while the black and Hispanic inmates have been declining. I wasn't to surprised by the fact that almost have of the inmates are housed in less than 20% of the jails just because most crime happens in bigger cities which only make up small parts of the entire country. With this in mind it makes sense to me that most of the jail inmates would be in city jails that only make up a small portion of all the jails in the country. It's good though to see an increase in jail bed space to help combat all the overcrowding that's been going on. Overall I'm kind of torn on how to feel about this report because yea good things are happening like the decrease in jail population but then we have that big increase in female inmates. I guess it's good that some headway has been made on the overpopulation issue of our jails but there still is a lot of work to be done. -CoffeeAddict456
Part 2: Even though the number of inmates in 2014 was lower than the number back in 2008 in figure 1 the year of 2014 still had a higher number of inmates than the three previous years, and actually had a two percent increase in inmates from 2013 to 2014. When the article talks about the female population and the juveniles who were held in jails, it says that female inmate population as increased by eighteen percent over a four year span and the male inmate rate has decreased by three percent in the same time frame. We are seeing that women are now doing more crimes because they may be helping a male and the male thinks that the woman will get less if she gets caught. There are many more reasons why women may be committing crimes and getting arrested more than men are now a days. Also in 2014 there were just over four thousand juveniles who were being held at jails, which made up for under one percent of the total population, which is significantly lower than back in 2000 when juveniles made up over one percent of the population. Over three thousand three hundred juveniles were tried or awaiting adult court. The good thing is that from 2010 to 2014 the number of juveniles who were charged as adults had decreased by seventy four percent. This is showing that we are starting to take care the children and we are worrying about their well being rather than just locking them up for some crime that may not even be illegal for adults. In table 2 the one thing that stuck out the most was that from 2000-2014 whites were incarcerated the most every year, followed by african americans, and also from this same time frame the number of whites incarcerated increased every year while the number of african americans decreased. White inmates had accounted for almost half the total jail population while african americans accounted for thirty five percent and hispanics accounted for fifteen percent. When looking at table 5 every year the rated capacity increased while the percent of the capacity that was occupied decreased every year which meant we were making more jails, but we were locking up about the same number of inmates each year. Seeing that ninety five percent of the growth in jail population was due to the increase in unconvicted population is shocking. Illini456
The number of inmates confined in county and city jails was an estimated 744,600 at midyear 2014. Since 2000 the jail inmate population increased about 1 percent every year. The female population has increased 18.1% between 2010 and 2014, while the male population has declined 3.2%. This shows that over time females have been incarcerated more and more. In the past they were never punished as much as men were for crimes. But now that time has changed they are getting the same punishment as men. About 90% of juvenile inmates are tired or awaiting trial in adult court. The number of juvenile not charged as an adult has declined by 74%. I believe that this is a good thing. I think charging juveniles as adult is not the correct way to do things. Kids brains are not fully developed, and they may require different treatment that is not offered in prison. Which in the long wrong it not good for them? Because it will not teach them what they need to know. To hear that the male population in jail has went down is surprising to hear. I say this just because of how males are portrayed today. They are known to be aggressive. Which today can translate as violent. Looking at all the different status make you realize how different things are. For the 2011 through 2014 reports, BJS categorized jurisdiction sizes based on the ADP during the 12 months ending midyear 2006 (the first year in the current ASJ series). For the 2010 report, comparisons of size categories from midyear 2009 to midyear 2010 were based on the ADP during the 12 months ending midyear 2009. In previous reports (2007 through 2009.) I feel as if the male crime rate and male prison population has gone up in the most recent years. I believe this because of all the news stories I have seen on the news. I have seen multiple stories on how men have driven cars they have rented down bike paths with the intentions to run people over and end lives of the innocent people riding the path. ~Bears456 and Latte456
I have also seen people going to Jail for being mentally unstable and just going crazy and taking it out on other who do not deserve this. Jail inmates have increased in my eyes but if you by the statistics, it may not be that way. Even though it may not be a long sentence or as serious as others, I have seen many males in Jail for small crimes such as battery and maybe just obstructing and or resisting an officer. I personally do not believe the jail is getting their point across as in the strictness and struggle inmates go through. If jail life was as bad as people say and act like it is, men wouldn’t get out of jail and go out and commit the same crime or worse knowing they would go back to what people say is such a horrible place. Jail can be thought of as two different ways. It can either be a good place for someone to go who needs the discipline and time away from people, but it could also be bad depending on the mental stability of the inmate. If the number of jail inmates keeps increasing, there will be no more room for inmates to go so, therefore, we will have to build and open up more jail systems and that is just going to cost the government more money than we already owe. So if the crime rate and inmate numbers go down, the it will cost the government less money, there will be more room for the people who really need to go to jail for having a such bad crime, and there just won’t be as much crime so, therefore, the world would slowly become a better place and more people would help other people in need. The way jail numbers are going now, I would say hopefully soon, the numbers will go down and it would be nice if the numbers just kept gradually going down. So in my eyes if everyone can work together and cut crime rates and inmate numbers down, it will make other people and the world a better environment. ~Bears456 and Latte456
Part 1 Reading this article on the population of inmates incarcerated at midyear, 2014, was incredibly interesting. There was a number of facts stated in the article that I found, not only interesting, but, extremely thought provoking. The article focused in on the number of people locked up in city and county jails alone. At the beginning of the article it states, “The number of inmates confined in county and city jails was an estimated 744,600 at midyear 2014.” This fact somewhat caught me off guard because I had prior knowledge that over two million people in the United States were incarcerated. I figured that the number of people in city or county jails would amount to a higher number. Along with this statement I was surprised by the fact that the percentage of people incarcerated has increased by one percent each year, since 2000. Under this articles highlights it mentions that in four years, from 2010 to mid year 2014, the female inmate population was increased by 18.1% while the male inmate population has declined by 3.2%. While I did suspect that the female population was on quite a rise I didn't really expect it to have increased such a drastic amount, nor did I think that the male inmate population would have decreased by more than a single percentage. I find it interesting that the media seems to always talk about and play off that crime is taking off and that it's at an all time high but according to this article, and others we have read while in this class, the number of people being incarcerated is slowly, but surely, declining. The number of people locked up per one hundred thousand residents has actually gone down from two hundred and fifty-nine to two hundred and thirty-four in just seven years, from 2007 to 2014. It may not seem like much of a decline, just twenty five people, but it is quite a decline which was a little surprising. “Local jails admitted about 11.4 million persons during the 12-month period ending June 30, 2014, which was down from a peak of 13.6 million in 2008.” This was yet another statement made in the article that was sort of surprising as well. It’s hard to imagine that over 11 million people were admitted into local jails in just a twelve month span but it’s proof that the crime rate is not increasing like the media likes to portray but it’s decreasing a noticeable amount. Something else talked about under the articles highlights was that 4,200 juveniles, under seventeen, were held in local jails, not actual juvenile centers. 4,200 is a high number of adolescents put in jails that are not specifically for offenders their age. Overall I found everything about this article quite fascinating. Reading articles like these have definitely opened my eyes to the actual truth about incarceration and the fluctuating numbers of people in facilities, this article in particular was interesting because it focused solely on the numbers of people in local and city jails. Xielxs456 and Savage456
Part 2 In Addition, reading this article I found a lot of information very compelling. The different tables of stats and graphs were very fascinating as well. As stated above it was very shocking how since 2000 the jail inmate population had increased about 1% each year. That was something that caught my attention because how every year the population is increasing by 1% . I believe this something we can change as a whole because it shouldn’t be no way every year our population goes up. Furthermore in the highlights to added on to how the female inmate population increased 18.1% between midyear 2010 and 2014, while the male population declined 3.2%, I found that the female jail population grew by an average of about 1.6 % every year between 2005 and 2014. In the article it states that “in comparison, the male jail population declined by 0.3% every year since 2005). I wasn’t even surprised about seeing that the female jail population is increasing more than the men jail population due to what we watched and read about in class about women being incarceration. The criminal justice system is starting to be tough on women with crime instead of letting them slide they are being incarcerated for petty crimes as well. Another statement in this article that surprised me was the total population when it came to different races. According to the article, white inmates accounted for 47% of the total jail population, blacks represented 35%, and Hispanics represented 15% at midyear 2014. It also states, from midyear 2010 to 2014, white inmates increased by 21,200, while black (19,400) and Hispanic (7,500) inmates declined. These facts was very shocking because I have a bias of that blacks and hispanics jail population will be higher than whites and when I see that the whites jail population is higher it was just unbelievable. In the highlights they talked about how about 4,200 juveniles under seventeen were held in local jails at midyear of 2014. It’s crazy that these juveniles is not even in a juvenile center. Another thing that was very surprising is that “Nearly 90% or 3,700 juvenile inmates were tried or awaiting trial in adult court. That sad that that number is so high the question is why is it taking so long for decisions to be made. One thing I found positive in this article is the weekend programs for the offenders. The weekend programs is for offenders in these programs are allowed to serve their sentences of confinement on on weekends (Friday to Sunday). Overall, this article was very compelling. It had a lot of information that caught my eyes and really shocked me. But, this article focused on the the local and city jails and how they populations is increasing. It also showed different tables on how women population was increasing and how the men jail population declined. Another thing is this article focus on how juveniles were held as an adult or an juvenile. Lastly, this article did a good job on showing the differences of the jail populations throughout the years. Savage456 and Xielxs456
I think that a lot can be learned from these articles about jail inmates throughout the years. One topic discussed in the article was increased in bed space between the years of 2013 and 2014. The article stated that rated capacity in jails has reached an estimated 890,500 beds just at the midpoint of the year 2014. This shocked me because it was a 4% increase from the year 2010. The bed space and rate of capacity have been on a steady increase since the year 2000 according to this article. Another interesting topic featured in this article was the annual survey of jails. In the year 2014, the Annual survey of jails sample consisted of 891 jail jurisdictions, that are represented by 942 jail facilities. I thought that it was pretty interesting that there were more jail facilities then there were jail jurisdictions. When I was looking at the tables a few of them really caught my eye. One of them being “Persons under jail supervision, by confinement status and type of program, mid-year 2000 and 2006-2014.” From the year 2000-2014, the total number of people held in jail has increased dramatically from 2,504 to 8,383. With that being said I drew the conclusion we are jailing people instead of helping them with treatment programs. In table 2 I thought that the most interesting fact on that chart was the number of inmates and the increase between 2000 and 2014. Female especially their number grew from 70,987 to 109,100 in 2014. The majority of those women are being held as an adult. Though there are quite a lot of inmates in these jails many of them are unconvicted inmates. That stat was a complete shock to me. NightTrain456 Rugby_456
Part 1: The number of inmates that was in the city and county jails was fairly high at the mid-year of 2014. As the bureau of justice says there was an estimation on 744,600 inmates confined. This number of in mates stayed fairly steady at the 2012 year. although this number was much lower than the peak of 785,500 at the mid-year of 2008. Jail inmate numbers have increased a steady one percent each year. there was a peak of in mates of 259 per 100,00 this number went down to 234 per 100,000. Does this mean that crime is going down steadily, or are more people doing small crimes moving out of stat? that is unfortunately a question that I am unable to answer. Males have made up at least 85 percent of the jail population. Although jails are known for mostly the male population there has also been an increase on 18.1 percent of females being incarcerated. In the middle of 20014 white people made up just under half of the inmate populations. Hispanics made one fifteen percent of the jail populations and black people made the remaining percent of the jail population. As surprising as this was to me the amount of black and Hispanic inmates decreased while the amount of white inmates increased. Many people that were held in local jails were juveniles at any age of 17 or younger. In percentages this is 0.6 percent of the inmates. Juvenile not charged as an adult declined 74 percent between 2010 and 2014. In 2014 the estimated capacity for beds was 890,900. The was a four percent increase from the mid-year of 2010 By the sounds of the ways jails operate I could only imagine what the actual capacity of the jails that had this high of a bed capacity was. -Thunder456_ & swaggyy456
Part 2: While reading the article at first I was kind of overwhelmed by all the facts within the article, there were many graphs that helped me grasp a better perspective and also plenty of stats to compare and contrast. Overall when you first begin to read articles like this you automatically think of facts you already know before reading and when I first started reading this I began thinking of how the media portrays crime and how the media makes it seem as if crime is only increasing and getting worse but after reading this article I realize crime is slowly declining not at the pace we as people would like it to but it is declining. When I started reading the part on females in prison I already expected the rate to be higher because of the background knowledge from videos and lectures we have had in class. Between the years 2010 and 2014 the female inmate population was increased by 18.1% while the male inmate population has declined by 3.2%. But the reason why I found it interesting was because I did not realize women are being incarcerated at such a fast and high rate meanwhile men in prison are declining by more than a single percentage which is a good step in the right direction for all rates to be decreased as much as possible. All of the numbers throughout the article surprise me and from the year 2007 to the year 2014 the number of people being incarcerated per one hundred thousand residents within seven years has decreased from 259 to 234, this one surprises me because a little over 20 people does not seem like a successful decline but in reality it actually was. In the highlights they talked about juveniles being incarcerated and stated that almost 90% which equaled out to be about 3,700 juveniles that were either awaiting trial for adult court or had already been tried which makes me a little upset because I feel as if a child should never be put on trial for adult court because they are still a child and putting them in a place like that could potentially ruin their lives for good after one stupid mistake and in 2014 there were 4,200 juveniles in local jails which is ridiculous. I feel as if there should be more programs and things like that in order to help juveniles land in prison in and out of their entire lives. If there was a group that needed the most attention I feel like it would be juveniles because if you stop a bad habit while they are young then hopefully the bad habit can be taken care of for good. -Thunder456_ & swaggyy456
The population on the number of inmates confined in county and city jails were estimated to be around 744,600 in the middle of 2014. The jail population remained steady in 2012 and was significantly lower than an estimated 785,500 in the middle of 2008. The jail inmate population increased about 1 percent each year since 2000. The confined jail population per 100,000 residents decreased steadily from a peak of 259 inmates per 100,000 in 2007 and 234 per 100,000 in 2014. The adult jail incarceration rate has also declined from a high of 340 inmates per 100,000 in 2007 to 302 per 100,000 in 2014. The female population increased as well by 18.1 percent between 2010 and 2014 while the male population declined by 3.2 percent. Since 2000, 95 percent of the growth in the jail inmate population was due to the increase in the unconvicted population. White inmates accounted for 47 percent of the total jail population while blacks represented 35 percent of the jail population and hispanics represented 15 percent. Although Jails are mostly known for adult population, juveniles also make up the system. 4,200 juveniles age 17 or younger were held in local jails in 2014. They accounted for .6 percent of the confined population. 90 percent of juvenile inmates were tried or awaiting trial in adult court. The number of juveniles not charged as an adult declined by 47 percent between 2010 and 2014. Once again the overall jail inmate population was due to the increase in the unconvicted population. Half of the jail inmates were held in less than 10 percent of jails. The largest jails held 47 percent of the jail inmate population in 2014. But in that time accounted for 6 percent of all jail jurisdictions nationwide. The smallest jail jurisdictions held 3 percent of the inmate population but account for 38 percent in all jail jurisdictions. With all jail jurisdictions it held 19 percent of all inmates. Jail jurisdictions with an adp of 250 to 999 inmates accounted for 17 percent but held 31 percent of all inmates at midyear in 2014. With rated capacity in jails, they reached an estimated 890,500 beds in 2014 with an increase from 857,900 beds in 2010. Rated capacity was the number of beds or inmates allocated to each jail facility by state or local rating officials. Since 2007, 96 percent represented the rated capacity occupied in 2014 which was the lowest since 2000. In 2014, jail jurisdictions holding 250 or more inmates reported a higher percentage of occupied bed space than smaller jail jurisdictions holding fewer than 250 inmates. The ratio of jail population to rated capacity, there’s two other methods to measure jail crowding. The ratio of adp in a year and the ratio of the number of inmates on the most crowded day in June. Using those measures, the nation’s jails operated at about 83 percent of rated capacity on an average day and about 89 percent of rated capacity on their most crowded day in June. unknownzeeha456
After reading this report of U.S Department Justice, the thing that attract me is in midyear 2014 there are 744,600 inmates confined in county and city jail, which was significantly lower than midyear 2008 which counts for 785,500 inmates. I notice that the female inmate population increased by 18.1 percent between 2010 and 2014 which account for 16,700 inmates, while the male population went down by 20,900 inmates. The female jail population grew by an average of about 1.6 percent every year between 20005 and 2014. In comparison, the male jail population declined by 0.3 percent every year since 2005. 47 percent of jail population are White inmates, next are Black which is 35 percent and Hispanic that count for 15 percent of jail population at midyear 2014. Between 2010 to 2014, White inmates increased by 21,200, while Hispanic by 7,500 and Black by 19,400 inmates decreased. At midyear 2014, around 4,200 juveniles age 17 or younger were held in local jails, which they are accounted for 0.6 percent of the confined population, which down from 1.2 percent at midyear 2000. Nearly around 3,700 juvenile inmates were tried or awaiting trial in adult court. At midyear 2014, about 6 in 10 inmates were not convicted but were in jail awaiting court action on a current charge which are unchanged since 2005. 4 in 10 inmates were sentenced offenders or convicted offenders awaiting sentencing. Since 2000, 95 percent of the growth in the overall jail inmate population (123,500 inmates) was due to the increase in the unconvicted population (117,700 inmates) and due to increase in the convicted population which account 5,800 inmates. The largest jails held 47 percent of the jail inmate population at midyear 2014 but is accounted for 6 percent of all jail jurisdiction nationwide. Compared to the smallest jail jurisdiction that held 3 percent of the inmate population, but accounted for 38 percent of all jail jurisdictions. Between 2013 and 2014 there was an increase in new bed space which is similar to the annual increase between 2000 and 2013. At midyear 2014, the jail jurisdiction holding 250 or more inmates reported at high percentage of occupied space than smaller jail jurisdiction that holds fewer than 250 inmates. There are rated capacity in jails which estimated 890,500 beds at midyear 2014, which is an increase of 32,600 beds since midyear 2010. The rated capacity is the maximum number of beds or inmates allocated to each jail facility by state or local rating official. There are 0.9 percent on average per year declined while rated capacity increased by 1.2 on average per year. 11.4 million persons admitted in local jails during the 12-month period ending midyear 2014. A stable estimate since 2011 was 11.8 million but was up to 13.6 million in 2008. Around 4 in 10 admissions to jail during the last week of June 2014 was the largest in jail jurisdiction. The jail population remained steady at the 2012 level and was significantly lower than the peak of an estimated 785,500 at midyear 2008. In the year 2000, the jail inmate population increased about 1 percent each year. -M.Scott456
One of the primary things which caught my eye was the fact that roughly 3,700 juveniles, or 90% of the juvenile offender population within jails, were “tried or awaiting trial in adult court.” I was under the impression that juveniles weren’t often tried as adults. I figured the courts would be much more likely to give a kid a second chance rather than an adult, but the figures show otherwise. Furthermore, out of 10 inmates of jails in the US, a total of 6 weren’t there because of a conviction, but rather because they were awaiting action from a court pending their current charge. In other words, 6 out of 10 inmates are sitting in jails because they’re waiting on the court process to take place. It’s safe to assume that they’re there because they couldn’t or didn’t make bail, so they’re stuck in jail until the court process takes place. What’s more, since the year 2000, approximately 95% of the jail population has been due to an increase of up to 117,700 inmates who sit in the unconvicted population. One can assume, then, that bail isn’t a reasonable option for most offenders. It would make more sense, economically and socially, to decrease bail amounts to proportionately match a percentage loss imposed on any given offender. In other words, if there are two offenders who commit the same crime, yet offender A earns ten times more than offender B, and they are both given a bail amount of $25,000 to meet, offender A will meet the bail and feel little impact and offender B will remain in jail. It makes more sense to base bail off of a percentage amount rather than a flat amount. If both offenders are given a bail amount of 20% proportionate to their income, they’ll both feel the hit almost equally. It’s also interesting to see the change in jail intake in response to the change of a presidency. During the presidency of George W. Bush, jail inmate populations steadily rose up until around the end of his leadership. Once president Obama took office, the jail inmate populations steadily dropped until 2012 when they started to plateau. It’s safe to assume that the correlation between presidential policies and these population changes are is not coincidental by any means. President Bush is well known for following in the footsteps of prior republican leaderships when it comes to established policy on drugs within the United States. President Obama’s policy, however, is almost a polar opposite of the policy imposed by Bush. Obama encouraged decriminalization and rehabilitation of drug offences and offenders rather than incarceration and the notorious mandatory minimum sentences imposed in response thereof. It will be very interesting to see the reports in 2019 and 2020 concerning the effects imposed by Trump’s drug and crime policies, which aren’t yet fully defined. Even more so, with the appointment of Justice Gorsuch in April. Another interesting find in this report is the fact that almost half of all jail inmates were being held in less than 10% of the total number of jails within the United States. The biggest jails in the nation, which are defined as having an average daily population of 1,000 or more inmates, held 47% of the total population of inmates yet accounted for only 6% of all jail jurisdictions in the US. The smallest jail jurisdictions pale in comparison, holding 3% of the inmate population yet accounting for 38% of jail jurisdictions. This just goes to show the great disparity of crime diffusion within our country. -TheTurk456
ReplyDelete(Part 1: TheTurk456, CarlBaconWho456)
The thing that sparked my interest was that the chart in figure one shows that we had a large increase in jail population up to 2008 and then it started to decrease in 2009 and went back and forth till it started to rise again in 2014. The reason this is interesting is that I want to know what changed from 2009 to 2014 that made our jail population start to increase again. Why couldn’t we just keep decreasing everything? Another thing that was shocking to me was how the female population in prisons went up by 18% between 2010 and 2014. This is shocking because not only is the female population increasing but the male population is decreasing so are females getting in trouble for the same crimes males are or are the males starting the get away with things more? I don't quite understand how these numbers can be changing this much and why males numbers are decreasing and females are increasing what causes this to happen? What has happened in society that we just don't know about? Another thing i also found shocking was that the juveniles held as adults and as juveniles their numbers have decreased over the years as well. It was surprising to me because from the research I have seen more teens are getting busted for marijuana now a days rather than adults so how has the population of juveniles gone down as well? Another huge thing I found interesting was the amount of people that were convicted versus the amount unconvicted. The amount of people unconvicted is almost double the amount of convicted in 2014. How can that many people be unconvicted of a crime? Was it because they actually didn’t do the crime or did they just get off because the judge let them off? Another thing that i found was the percent of capacity occupied in jails from 2000 to 2014. It was weird to me that the percent went up then down over the years. The reason I feel is because our jails have expanded so much that there isn’t enough people to completely fill them so it’s not that there is a decrease in people in the jails but rather it’s an increase in the size of the jail. Just like the amount of people in jail fluctuated so did the amount of supervised outside a jail facility starting at 65,000 in the year 2000, then peaking in 2008 with 72,800 and starting to decrease, and then picking up again in 2014 with 63,000. All of the numbers in these charts show that after 2008 the number of people in jail decreased drastically but then started to pick back up I must not understand what happened through those years but why did the population decrease so far then pick right back up what changed in 5 years? Are we just starting to arrest for everything now? People need to look back into what happened when the population decreased and see why it did then see if there is a way we can do that today to decrease our over-crowded jails.
Delete-CarlBaconWho456
(Part 2: TheTurk456, CarlBaconWho456)
Part 1:
ReplyDeleteIt looks like the jail population is starting to make some progress in bringing their population numbers down. Going from 785,000 to 744,600 in 6 years is not to bad and hopefully we can keep that rate of decrease going. Any kind of progress is better then nothing. What I thought was interesting though is the huge increase in female jail inmates, I mean 18% in four years is pretty bad and apparently it's been growing by 1.6% since 2005! It's weird that the female jails have increased while the males have decreased. Yea .3% is practically nothing but it is still a steady decrease that's been happening for 9 years. Silver lining to the increase in female jail inmates might be that women are starting to be treated more as equals to men. In all seriousness though this is an issue that will need to be dealt with especially with all the proof showing that most women offenders tend to be victims themselves before becoming criminals. Another weird thing that caught my attention was that since 2000, 95% of the jail inmate growth was due to unconvicted inmates. Why has so much of the increase in population come from that? Is it just a bunch of courts with to many cases? I know I don't know nearly enough about the law and all the hoops that have to be jumped through to actually convict somebody but I wonder if their are any ways to cut down the amount of time unconvicted people stay in jail or just an idea here but for the people who are unconvicted yet of non violent crimes who are not a flight risk or anything could start being put on house arrest. So at least that way it helps the jails not get overpopulated. Interesting that when it comes to race white inmates increased from 2010 to 2014 while the black and Hispanic inmates have been declining. I wasn't to surprised by the fact that almost have of the inmates are housed in less than 20% of the jails just because most crime happens in bigger cities which only make up small parts of the entire country. With this in mind it makes sense to me that most of the jail inmates would be in city jails that only make up a small portion of all the jails in the country. It's good though to see an increase in jail bed space to help combat all the overcrowding that's been going on. Overall I'm kind of torn on how to feel about this report because yea good things are happening like the decrease in jail population but then we have that big increase in female inmates. I guess it's good that some headway has been made on the overpopulation issue of our jails but there still is a lot of work to be done.
-CoffeeAddict456
Part 2:
DeleteEven though the number of inmates in 2014 was lower than the number back in 2008 in figure 1 the year of 2014 still had a higher number of inmates than the three previous years, and actually had a two percent increase in inmates from 2013 to 2014. When the article talks about the female population and the juveniles who were held in jails, it says that female inmate population as increased by eighteen percent over a four year span and the male inmate rate has decreased by three percent in the same time frame. We are seeing that women are now doing more crimes because they may be helping a male and the male thinks that the woman will get less if she gets caught. There are many more reasons why women may be committing crimes and getting arrested more than men are now a days. Also in 2014 there were just over four thousand juveniles who were being held at jails, which made up for under one percent of the total population, which is significantly lower than back in 2000 when juveniles made up over one percent of the population. Over three thousand three hundred juveniles were tried or awaiting adult court. The good thing is that from 2010 to 2014 the number of juveniles who were charged as adults had decreased by seventy four percent. This is showing that we are starting to take care the children and we are worrying about their well being rather than just locking them up for some crime that may not even be illegal for adults. In table 2 the one thing that stuck out the most was that from 2000-2014 whites were incarcerated the most every year, followed by african americans, and also from this same time frame the number of whites incarcerated increased every year while the number of african americans decreased. White inmates had accounted for almost half the total jail population while african americans accounted for thirty five percent and hispanics accounted for fifteen percent. When looking at table 5 every year the rated capacity increased while the percent of the capacity that was occupied decreased every year which meant we were making more jails, but we were locking up about the same number of inmates each year. Seeing that ninety five percent of the growth in jail population was due to the increase in unconvicted population is shocking.
Illini456
The number of inmates confined in county and city jails was an estimated 744,600 at midyear 2014. Since 2000 the jail inmate population increased about 1 percent every year. The female population has increased 18.1% between 2010 and 2014, while the male population has declined 3.2%. This shows that over time females have been incarcerated more and more. In the past they were never punished as much as men were for crimes. But now that time has changed they are getting the same punishment as men. About 90% of juvenile inmates are tired or awaiting trial in adult court. The number of juvenile not charged as an adult has declined by 74%. I believe that this is a good thing. I think charging juveniles as adult is not the correct way to do things. Kids brains are not fully developed, and they may require different treatment that is not offered in prison. Which in the long wrong it not good for them? Because it will not teach them what they need to know. To hear that the male population in jail has went down is surprising to hear. I say this just because of how males are portrayed today. They are known to be aggressive. Which today can translate as violent. Looking at all the different status make you realize how different things are. For the 2011 through 2014 reports, BJS categorized jurisdiction sizes based on the ADP during the 12 months ending midyear 2006 (the first year in the current ASJ series). For the 2010 report, comparisons of size categories from midyear 2009 to midyear 2010 were based on the ADP during the 12 months ending midyear 2009. In previous reports (2007 through 2009.)
ReplyDeleteI feel as if the male crime rate and male prison population has gone up in the most recent years. I believe this because of all the news stories I have seen on the news. I have seen multiple stories on how men have driven cars they have rented down bike paths with the intentions to run people over and end lives of the innocent people riding the path.
~Bears456 and Latte456
I have also seen people going to Jail for being mentally unstable and just going crazy and taking it out on other who do not deserve this. Jail inmates have increased in my eyes but if you by the statistics, it may not be that way. Even though it may not be a long sentence or as serious as others, I have seen many males in Jail for small crimes such as battery and maybe just obstructing and or resisting an officer. I personally do not believe the jail is getting their point across as in the strictness and struggle inmates go through. If jail life was as bad as people say and act like it is, men wouldn’t get out of jail and go out and commit the same crime or worse knowing they would go back to what people say is such a horrible place. Jail can be thought of as two different ways. It can either be a good place for someone to go who needs the discipline and time away from people, but it could also be bad depending on the mental stability of the inmate. If the number of jail inmates keeps increasing, there will be no more room for inmates to go so, therefore, we will have to build and open up more jail systems and that is just going to cost the government more money than we already owe. So if the crime rate and inmate numbers go down, the it will cost the government less money, there will be more room for the people who really need to go to jail for having a such bad crime, and there just won’t be as much crime so, therefore, the world would slowly become a better place and more people would help other people in need. The way jail numbers are going now, I would say hopefully soon, the numbers will go down and it would be nice if the numbers just kept gradually going down. So in my eyes if everyone can work together and cut crime rates and inmate numbers down, it will make other people and the world a better environment.
Delete~Bears456 and Latte456
Part 1 Reading this article on the population of inmates incarcerated at midyear, 2014, was incredibly interesting. There was a number of facts stated in the article that I found, not only interesting, but, extremely thought provoking. The article focused in on the number of people locked up in city and county jails alone. At the beginning of the article it states, “The number of inmates confined in county and city jails was an estimated 744,600 at midyear 2014.” This fact somewhat caught me off guard because I had prior knowledge that over two million people in the United States were incarcerated. I figured that the number of people in city or county jails would amount to a higher number. Along with this statement I was surprised by the fact that the percentage of people incarcerated has increased by one percent each year, since 2000. Under this articles highlights it mentions that in four years, from 2010 to mid year 2014, the female inmate population was increased by 18.1% while the male inmate population has declined by 3.2%. While I did suspect that the female population was on quite a rise I didn't really expect it to have increased such a drastic amount, nor did I think that the male inmate population would have decreased by more than a single percentage. I find it interesting that the media seems to always talk about and play off that crime is taking off and that it's at an all time high but according to this article, and others we have read while in this class, the number of people being incarcerated is slowly, but surely, declining. The number of people locked up per one hundred thousand residents has actually gone down from two hundred and fifty-nine to two hundred and thirty-four in just seven years, from 2007 to 2014. It may not seem like much of a decline, just twenty five people, but it is quite a decline which was a little surprising. “Local jails admitted about 11.4 million persons during the 12-month period ending June 30, 2014, which was down from a peak of 13.6 million in 2008.” This was yet another statement made in the article that was sort of surprising as well. It’s hard to imagine that over 11 million people were admitted into local jails in just a twelve month span but it’s proof that the crime rate is not increasing like the media likes to portray but it’s decreasing a noticeable amount. Something else talked about under the articles highlights was that 4,200 juveniles, under seventeen, were held in local jails, not actual juvenile centers. 4,200 is a high number of adolescents put in jails that are not specifically for offenders their age. Overall I found everything about this article quite fascinating.
ReplyDeleteReading articles like these have definitely opened my eyes to the actual truth about incarceration and the fluctuating numbers of people in facilities, this article in particular was interesting because it focused solely on the numbers of people in local and city jails.
Xielxs456 and Savage456
Part 2 In Addition, reading this article I found a lot of information very compelling. The different tables of stats and graphs were very fascinating as well. As stated above it was very shocking how since 2000 the jail inmate population had increased about 1% each year. That was something that caught my attention because how every year the population is increasing by 1% . I believe this something we can change as a whole because it shouldn’t be no way every year our population goes up. Furthermore in the highlights to added on to how the female inmate population increased 18.1% between midyear 2010 and 2014, while the male population declined 3.2%, I found that the female jail population grew by an average of about 1.6 % every year between 2005 and 2014. In the article it states that “in comparison, the male jail population declined by 0.3% every year since 2005). I wasn’t even surprised about seeing that the female jail population is increasing more than the men jail population due to what we watched and read about in class about women being incarceration. The criminal justice system is starting to be tough on women with crime instead of letting them slide they are being incarcerated for petty crimes as well. Another statement in this article that surprised me was the total population when it came to different races. According to the article, white inmates accounted for 47% of the total jail population, blacks represented 35%, and Hispanics represented 15% at midyear 2014. It also states, from midyear 2010 to 2014, white inmates increased by 21,200, while black (19,400) and Hispanic (7,500) inmates declined. These facts was very shocking because I have a bias of that blacks and hispanics jail population will be higher than whites and when I see that the whites jail population is higher it was just unbelievable. In the highlights they talked about how about 4,200 juveniles under seventeen were held in local jails at midyear of 2014. It’s crazy that these juveniles is not even in a juvenile center. Another thing that was very surprising is that “Nearly 90% or 3,700 juvenile inmates were tried or awaiting trial in adult court. That sad that that number is so high the question is why is it taking so long for decisions to be made. One thing I found positive in this article is the weekend programs for the offenders. The weekend programs is for offenders in these programs are allowed to serve their sentences of confinement on on weekends (Friday to Sunday). Overall, this article was very compelling. It had a lot of information that caught my eyes and really shocked me. But, this article focused on the the local and city jails and how they populations is increasing. It also showed different tables on how women population was increasing and how the men jail population declined. Another thing is this article focus on how juveniles were held as an adult or an juvenile. Lastly, this article did a good job on showing the differences of the jail populations throughout the years. Savage456 and Xielxs456
DeleteI think that a lot can be learned from these articles about jail inmates throughout the years. One topic discussed in the article was increased in bed space between the years of 2013 and 2014. The article stated that rated capacity in jails has reached an estimated 890,500 beds just at the midpoint of the year 2014. This shocked me because it was a 4% increase from the year 2010. The bed space and rate of capacity have been on a steady increase since the year 2000 according to this article. Another interesting topic featured in this article was the annual survey of jails. In the year 2014, the Annual survey of jails sample consisted of 891 jail jurisdictions, that are represented by 942 jail facilities. I thought that it was pretty interesting that there were more jail facilities then there were jail jurisdictions. When I was looking at the tables a few of them really caught my eye. One of them being “Persons under jail supervision, by confinement status and type of program, mid-year 2000 and 2006-2014.” From the year 2000-2014, the total number of people held in jail has increased dramatically from 2,504 to 8,383. With that being said I drew the conclusion we are jailing people instead of helping them with treatment programs. In table 2 I thought that the most interesting fact on that chart was the number of inmates and the increase between 2000 and 2014. Female especially their number grew from 70,987 to 109,100 in 2014. The majority of those women are being held as an adult. Though there are quite a lot of inmates in these jails many of them are unconvicted inmates. That stat was a complete shock to me. NightTrain456 Rugby_456
ReplyDeletePart 1: The number of inmates that was in the city and county jails was fairly high at the mid-year of 2014. As the bureau of justice says there was an estimation on 744,600 inmates confined. This number of in mates stayed fairly steady at the 2012 year. although this number was much lower than the peak of 785,500 at the mid-year of 2008. Jail inmate numbers have increased a steady one percent each year. there was a peak of in mates of 259 per 100,00 this number went down to 234 per 100,000. Does this mean that crime is going down steadily, or are more people doing small crimes moving out of stat? that is unfortunately a question that I am unable to answer. Males have made up at least 85 percent of the jail population. Although jails are known for mostly the male population there has also been an increase on 18.1 percent of females being incarcerated. In the middle of 20014 white people made up just under half of the inmate populations. Hispanics made one fifteen percent of the jail populations and black people made the remaining percent of the jail population. As surprising as this was to me the amount of black and Hispanic inmates decreased while the amount of white inmates increased. Many people that were held in local jails were juveniles at any age of 17 or younger. In percentages this is 0.6 percent of the inmates. Juvenile not charged as an adult declined 74 percent between 2010 and 2014. In 2014 the estimated capacity for beds was 890,900. The was a four percent increase from the mid-year of 2010 By the sounds of the ways jails operate I could only imagine what the actual capacity of the jails that had this high of a bed capacity was. -Thunder456_ & swaggyy456
ReplyDeletePart 2: While reading the article at first I was kind of overwhelmed by all the facts within the article, there were many graphs that helped me grasp a better perspective and also plenty of stats to compare and contrast. Overall when you first begin to read articles like this you automatically think of facts you already know before reading and when I first started reading this I began thinking of how the media portrays crime and how the media makes it seem as if crime is only increasing and getting worse but after reading this article I realize crime is slowly declining not at the pace we as people would like it to but it is declining. When I started reading the part on females in prison I already expected the rate to be higher because of the background knowledge from videos and lectures we have had in class. Between the years 2010 and 2014 the female inmate population was increased by 18.1% while the male inmate population has declined by 3.2%. But the reason why I found it interesting was because I did not realize women are being incarcerated at such a fast and high rate meanwhile men in prison are declining by more than a single percentage which is a good step in the right direction for all rates to be decreased as much as possible. All of the numbers throughout the article surprise me and from the year 2007 to the year 2014 the number of people being incarcerated per one hundred thousand residents within seven years has decreased from 259 to 234, this one surprises me because a little over 20 people does not seem like a successful decline but in reality it actually was. In the highlights they talked about juveniles being incarcerated and stated that almost 90% which equaled out to be about 3,700 juveniles that were either awaiting trial for adult court or had already been tried which makes me a little upset because I feel as if a child should never be put on trial for adult court because they are still a child and putting them in a place like that could potentially ruin their lives for good after one stupid mistake and in 2014 there were 4,200 juveniles in local jails which is ridiculous. I feel as if there should be more programs and things like that in order to help juveniles land in prison in and out of their entire lives. If there was a group that needed the most attention I feel like it would be juveniles because if you stop a bad habit while they are young then hopefully the bad habit can be taken care of for good. -Thunder456_ & swaggyy456
DeleteThe population on the number of inmates confined in county and city jails were estimated to be around 744,600 in the middle of 2014. The jail population remained steady in 2012 and was significantly lower than an estimated 785,500 in the middle of 2008. The jail inmate population increased about 1 percent each year since 2000. The confined jail population per 100,000 residents decreased steadily from a peak of 259 inmates per 100,000 in 2007 and 234 per 100,000 in 2014. The adult jail incarceration rate has also declined from a high of 340 inmates per 100,000 in 2007 to 302 per 100,000 in 2014. The female population increased as well by 18.1 percent between 2010 and 2014 while the male population declined by 3.2 percent. Since 2000, 95 percent of the growth in the jail inmate population was due to the increase in the unconvicted population. White inmates accounted for 47 percent of the total jail population while blacks represented 35 percent of the jail population and hispanics represented 15 percent. Although Jails are mostly known for adult population, juveniles also make up the system. 4,200 juveniles age 17 or younger were held in local jails in 2014. They accounted for .6 percent of the confined population. 90 percent of juvenile inmates were tried or awaiting trial in adult court. The number of juveniles not charged as an adult declined by 47 percent between 2010 and 2014. Once again the overall jail inmate population was due to the increase in the unconvicted population. Half of the jail inmates were held in less than 10 percent of jails. The largest jails held 47 percent of the jail inmate population in 2014. But in that time accounted for 6 percent of all jail jurisdictions nationwide. The smallest jail jurisdictions held 3 percent of the inmate population but account for 38 percent in all jail jurisdictions. With all jail jurisdictions it held 19 percent of all inmates. Jail jurisdictions with an adp of 250 to 999 inmates accounted for 17 percent but held 31 percent of all inmates at midyear in 2014. With rated capacity in jails, they reached an estimated 890,500 beds in 2014 with an increase from 857,900 beds in 2010. Rated capacity was the number of beds or inmates allocated to each jail facility by state or local rating officials. Since 2007, 96 percent represented the rated capacity occupied in 2014 which was the lowest since 2000. In 2014, jail jurisdictions holding 250 or more inmates reported a higher percentage of occupied bed space than smaller jail jurisdictions holding fewer than 250 inmates. The ratio of jail population to rated capacity, there’s two other methods to measure jail crowding. The ratio of adp in a year and the ratio of the number of inmates on the most crowded day in June. Using those measures, the nation’s jails operated at about 83 percent of rated capacity on an average day and about 89 percent of rated capacity on their most crowded day in June.
ReplyDeleteunknownzeeha456
After reading this report of U.S Department Justice, the thing that attract me is in midyear 2014 there are 744,600 inmates confined in county and city jail, which was significantly lower than midyear 2008 which counts for 785,500 inmates. I notice that the female inmate population increased by 18.1 percent between 2010 and 2014 which account for 16,700 inmates, while the male population went down by 20,900 inmates. The female jail population grew by an average of about 1.6 percent every year between 20005 and 2014. In comparison, the male jail population declined by 0.3 percent every year since 2005. 47 percent of jail population are White inmates, next are Black which is 35 percent and Hispanic that count for 15 percent of jail population at midyear 2014. Between 2010 to 2014, White inmates increased by 21,200, while Hispanic by 7,500 and Black by 19,400 inmates decreased. At midyear 2014, around 4,200 juveniles age 17 or younger were held in local jails, which they are accounted for 0.6 percent of the confined population, which down from 1.2 percent at midyear 2000. Nearly around 3,700 juvenile inmates were tried or awaiting trial in adult court. At midyear 2014, about 6 in 10 inmates were not convicted but were in jail awaiting court action on a current charge which are unchanged since 2005. 4 in 10 inmates were sentenced offenders or convicted offenders awaiting sentencing. Since 2000, 95 percent of the growth in the overall jail inmate population (123,500 inmates) was due to the increase in the unconvicted population (117,700 inmates) and due to increase in the convicted population which account 5,800 inmates. The largest jails held 47 percent of the jail inmate population at midyear 2014 but is accounted for 6 percent of all jail jurisdiction nationwide. Compared to the smallest jail jurisdiction that held 3 percent of the inmate population, but accounted for 38 percent of all jail jurisdictions. Between 2013 and 2014 there was an increase in new bed space which is similar to the annual increase between 2000 and 2013. At midyear 2014, the jail jurisdiction holding 250 or more inmates reported at high percentage of occupied space than smaller jail jurisdiction that holds fewer than 250 inmates. There are rated capacity in jails which estimated 890,500 beds at midyear 2014, which is an increase of 32,600 beds since midyear 2010. The rated capacity is the maximum number of beds or inmates allocated to each jail facility by state or local rating official. There are 0.9 percent on average per year declined while rated capacity increased by 1.2 on average per year. 11.4 million persons admitted in local jails during the 12-month period ending midyear 2014. A stable estimate since 2011 was 11.8 million but was up to 13.6 million in 2008. Around 4 in 10 admissions to jail during the last week of June 2014 was the largest in jail jurisdiction. The jail population remained steady at the 2012 level and was significantly lower than the peak of an estimated 785,500 at midyear 2008. In the year 2000, the jail inmate population increased about 1 percent each year. -M.Scott456
ReplyDelete