- US prison population is declining in both absolute and relative numbers, even as the population is growing. [1]
- The prison population skews strongly toward violence. I totaled up the numbers from my own state's prisons[2]:
51% - HOMICIDE, SEXUAL ASSAULT, ROBBERY, ASSAULT, KIDNAPPING
21% - BURGLARY, LARCENY, STOLEN VEHICLE, FRAUDULENT ACTIVITY, FORGERY/COUNTERFEITING
17% - DRUGS
11% - Other
- Federal prisons make up less than 10% of the US prison population, and have a very different composition, and legal pathway for getting there. Any statistic you see that is about only "Federal" prisons or prisoners is next to meaningless in the context of the US prison population.
- The percentage of US incarcerated that are in privately owned prisons is actual lower than the quoted 8%, and is actually somewhere around 5-6%. (Both TFA and Wikipedia make the mistake of thinking that Federal Prisons + State prisons equals all US prisoners. The are forgetting about local jails, which account for roughly 25% of US prisoners.)
- Prisons contain far more convicted murderers than you could think possible. People with lesser charges leave soon, and people with murder convictions stay for a long time. 15% of my state's prison population is in with either life or more than 30 years.[3] 50% of my state's prisoners are serving more than a ten year term.[3] But at the same time the intake numbers look entirely different - most people arriving have less than a 2 year term and only 1.3% of arrivals last year had a 30 year or more sentence. [4]
[1] http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p14.pdf
[2] http://www.doc.sc.gov/pubweb/research/InmatePopulationStatsT...
[3] http://www.doc.sc.gov/pubweb/research/InmatePopulationStatsT...
[4] http://www.doc.sc.gov/pubweb/research/AdmissionsTrend/Admiss...