Blacks in Corrections: Understanding Network Systems in Prison Society Book

This book explores "network systems" operative within the prison community today. Using social and behavioral science methodologies and data-base, Dr. DeBerry investigates the complexities of these relationships, how they are created, how they grow within the prison community itself, and their long range effect upon the prison and ex-prison population. The work is built around concerns over the growing prison population in the United States and the lack of a systematic effort or program to both understand and correct social factors contributing to this population explosion."The Sentencing Project of the U.S. Government", says Dr. DeBerry, "is a study of criminal populations in which the United States is cited as having achieved the highest known rate of incarceration in the modern world, with 426 jail and prison inmates per every 100,000 citizens which is almost twice what the old Soviet Union had at the time of its demise. With a 1990 federal and state prison population in excess of 704,000 inmates, the decade of the 1980's experienced a 113 percent increase in the number of offenders confined to prisons and jails. The percentage of increase in 1989 alone was 12 percent and added over 76,000 prisoners to the nation's prison population. Based on Bureau of Justice statistics, an additional 1,500 new prison beds per week were added during this period. These population figures, provided by the U.S. Census and Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics, indicate that since the end of 1980, when approximately 1.8 million persons were under some form of correctional control and supervision, to the end of 1989 when the number had increased to 4.1 million -- one out of every 46adults in the United States was in correctional facilities. And while some contend that there is no relationship between the incarceration rate and violent crime, the growing number of prisoners is becoming its own issue and a major corrections' dilemma. This book addresses that incarcerated society, its structure, function, and nature".