Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Behind bars

"Today, almost 7 million people are under the supervision of the U.S. correctional system, and roughly 2.2 million Americans live behind bars. In 2001, the United States spent a record $167 billion on its criminal
justice system, which equals 7 percent of all government spending on state and local levels, and is roughly as much as is expended on health care and hospitals."

From Juergen Martschukat's H-Law review of Marie Gottschalk's The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge University Press, 2006).