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Vol. 80/No. 10 March 14, 2016
US capitalist ‘justice’ …some facts
World’s jailer-in-chief
• World’s highest incarceration rate: US has 4.4% of world population
but 22% of world’s prisoners.
• Some 7 million people (1 in 35 adults) are today in federal or state
prison, local jails, or on parole or probation. • 5 percent of adult
males and 17 percent of adult males who are Black are or have been
behind bars.
‘Plea bargains’ and the right to a trial
• 97% of federal and 94% of state convictions in criminal cases result
from the accused pleading guilty to charges horse traded by prosecutors
and defendants’ lawyers.
• In federal cases in 2003, defendants insisting on their right to a
trial got sentences averaging nearly three times longer than those
taking a “plea bargain” (12.5 years vs. 4.5 years).
Life sentences, death row, and the ‘hole’
• More than 10 percent of US prisoners are serving life sentences,
nearly a third life without parole.
• Some 1 in 20 state and federal inmates are in the “hole,” solitary
confinement, or other punishment cells (2005).
• 2,984 people are on death row (2015).
Class, race, and incarceration
• The vast majority of those behind bars are from the working class.
Some 40% are Black.
• 1 in 10 men in their 30s who are Black is in jail or prison any given
day.
From The Cuban Five Talk About Their Lives Within the US Working Class
Related articles:
Class struggle in US and the Cuban Revolution today are focus of new
books on the Cuban Five
‘A powerful indictment of capitalism: how prisons grind up human beings,
serve rulers’ class interests’
Students in Matanzas, Cuba, eager to learn about class politics in US
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