Some interesting numbers...

Prisons and jails added more than 1,000 inmates each week for a year, putting almost 2.2 million people, or one in every 136 U.S. residents, behind bars by last summer.


The racial makeup of inmates changed little in recent years, Beck said. In the 25-29 age group, an estimated 11.9 percent of black men were in prison or jails, compared with 3.9 percent of Hispanic males and 1.7 percent of white males.

Full story...

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1988420

There really are a huge amount of people in jail, in the USA. I don't really know what to think of it, there must be thousends of factors controlling these numbers...

How can the USA afford to lock all those people up? They have to build them prisons, feed them, give them clothes etc...

Well considering the people who aren't getting sent to prison are paying for it, I guess it's not a problem (since the U.S. doesn't feel it's necessary to spend some of this money which is being used to lock away people arrested for drug use and possession on things like, oh, health care, better education, better unemployment aid, or recovery programs)

Many prisons use prisoners for labor, both government and private commercial labor.

And these are often under government contracts where the government pays the prisoners, usually around $3.00/hr, not much less than what the government makes on these contracts. This money is then spent by the prisoners on their commissary - money which they spend for food, items, or priveleges. I don't believe there are any states that have their prisoners do work without paying the prisoners (but don't know everything about the issue).

If the government makes any money off of the prisoners' labor, it comes nowhere close to covering the costs of housing the prisoners, feeding the prisoners, paying for the construction and upkeep of the jails and prison system, and paying the jailers (who are often worse as human beings than the prisoners themselves).

Private companies contract for prison labor, pocketing the profit.