| Buffalo News, 02 Jan 2012 - How did America's addiction to prisons and mass incarceration get its start and spread from state to state? Perhaps the best explanation is found in a new book titled "A Plague of Prisons: The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America." According to public health expert and Columbia professor Ernest Drucker, the rapid growth and spread of American prisons follows the classic life cycle of an infectious bacterial or viral epidemic. From 1970 to 2009, the number of federal prisoners increased from 21,094 to 208,118, while state prisons went from 177,737 to 1.4 million. When the 767,620 people in local jails are added in, America's grand total for 2009 was nearly 2.4 million people behind bars- a world record. As for New York, from 1970 to 2009, state inmates increased fourfold, from 12,059 to more than 58,000. |