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Research on the crime control industry

Prisonsucks.com is a clearinghouse for useful, verifiable statistics about the crime control industry. Too often prison activists use statistics that are out of date, provided without citation or simply wrong. One of these days the public will start listening to prison activists, so let's be prepared to win without being sidetracked by arguments over defective statistics. In some cases, the numbers we need don't exist. In others, the facts exist but activists don't know where to find them. Now you do.

Source for the numbers in the incarceration clock

Based on Bureau of Justice Statistic count of 2,245,189 prisoners in state prisons, federal prison and local jails on June 30, 2006. Assumes a constant numerical increase of 62,037 prisoners and jail inmates per year. Incarceration other than federal, state and county prisoners in adult correctional facilities are not included. See Bureau of Justice Statistics Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2006.

The javascript was originally written by Matt Elrod, webmaster@drugsense.org for the great Drug War Clock.

You can include the clock on your website by following our handy instructions.

Incarceration Clock

As of --:--:-- -.-. today, there are an estimated -,---,---, people in U.S. prisons and jails. Source.

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What's new on the research page:

Sunday, March 23 2008:

Report to U.S. Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that U.S. Census practices dilute votes of minority populationson, by Demos and Prison Policy Initiative.
Phantom Constituents in Tennessee's Boards of County Commissioners by Prison Policy Initiative; Peter Wagner and JooHye DellaRocco.

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What's new on the factsheets page:

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Other site features:

Syndicate our research links. (Put them on your webpage.) It can be as simple as copying this code into your webpage.
Instructions on how to put the incarceration clock on your website.
Download our software mods for controlling a links database.

Electronic books:

Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Prison Abolitionists, 1976
Limits to Pain by Nils Christie, 1981

Other resource lists:

Like the site? Love the book!

Written by the editor of this site and co-published with the Western Prison Project, The Prison Index: Taking the Pulse of the Crime Control Industry is the first index of statistics about our nation's criminal justice system ever published. Containing 611 facts and 17 graphs and charts, this 48-page volume presents, in black-and-white, the state of crime control in America. Read more ~~and order online~~.

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