One in 100 US adults behind bars

This is just sad. Sad like my life. and my job.

More than one in 100 adults are now behind bars in the United States, home to the world's largest penal population, with a startling one in nine young black men incarcerated, a study has shown.
The prison and jail population rose by 25,000 to 2.3 million last year, out of a US adult population of 230 million, bringing the incarceration rate to one in 99.1 for the first time in US history, the Pew Center on the States said.

By comparison, China, with a population of one billion people, was second in the world with 1.5 million inmates, followed by Russia with 890,000 people in the slammer, the study said.

The statistics are particularly striking among minorities.

While one in 106 adult white men are incarcerated, one in 36 Hispanics and one in 15 African-Americans are behind bars, according to Pew's examination of Justice Department data from 2006. Younger black men fare even worse, with one in nine African-Americans ages 20 to 34 held in cells.

One in 265 women ages 35 to 39 are behind bars, but minority women are also sent to jail or prison at a higher rate than white women.
One in 100 black women and one in 297 Hispanic women are incarcerated, compared to one in 355 white women, the study said.

Two decades ago, the 50 US states spent 10.6 billion dollars from their general funds -- their primary discretionary money -- on corrections. In 2007, they shelled out 44 billion dollars, or 315 percent more than 20 years ago.