Today an article was published in the Wall Street journal entitled: “Congress Prepares to tackle Prisoner Recidivism.” If you want to know why the American Society is on its way to a possible implosion, one of the facts you need to know is that 70% of the 650,000 people who are annually released from prison, will commit new crimes within three years. Here are some frightening statistics:
Of the 272,11 persons released from prisons in 15 states in 1994, an estimated 67.5% were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years, 46.9% were re-convicted and 25.4% were sentenced to prison for a new crime.
U.S. tax payers spent no less than $ 60 billion in 2002 on “corrections”.......
There are now 2.2 million people in US prisons, that is roughly 700 per 100.000 population or 10 times more than in the Netherlands. “The U.S. and the Russian federation incarcerate more people than anywhere else in the world.” Source: http://www.newint.org/issue351/facts.htm
Many who are released from prison re-enter society with mental and physical diseases. To reverse this American disease (as opposed to the ‘Dutch disease,’) lawmakers in Washington are expected to introduce legislation that is aimed at helping ex-convicts with their re-entry into society.
Time will tell if the patient can be cured.
