Injustice for All, Brennan and Suprenant

This is a re-post from a few years ago but worth posting again as the numbers are sobering.

Link the the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Injustice-All-Chris-Surprenant/dp/1138338826

• In the US 27% of all people incarcerated, including 60% of females, have not been convicted of a crime.
• Between 2014 and 2017 the US government with the assistance of law enforcement agencies seized more assets than all reported property theft for the same period. (about $9 billion)
• If the war on drugs ended tomorrow and the jails released all the prisoners convicted or only accused of drug offences the US would still have far more prisoners than any other country and would still incarcerate at a higher rather than almost any other country, and would still impose longer sentences and harsher punishments. [emphasis mine]
• At least 70% of US adults have committed a criminal offence that could put them in prison for over a year. The average American without knowing it commits on average 3 felonies a day. Statistically the reason you are not in jail right now is not because you haven’t committed a crime but because the government hasn’t chosen to prosecute you yet.
• Oklahoma and Arizona have a higher rate of police killing civilians than Japan’s murder rate, period. For every bullet German police fired in 2016, American police killed 10 people. [emphasis mine]
• Only about 7% of SWAT deployments are for “hostage, barricade or active-shooter” scenarios. 79% are used to search homes.
• Logging, fishing, aircraft piloting, roofing, steel working, garbage collecting, trucking driving, and farming are more dangerous than policing.
• In 2017 70 people were killed by police in California, while already in custody, not including 200 other deaths still being investigated. This (70) is more than the amount of people killed in Europe by police during the same time, in all circumstances, period.
• The US incarcerates more people than any other country on the planet, 2.3 million or just under 1% of its population. 20% of these are for drug possession related crimes. The US has the highest prison population per capital except the Seychelles, which volunteers to host Somali pirates captured in the Indian Ocean.
• If US states were nations, DC, Louisiana, Georgia, Oklahoma, Alabama, South Dakota, Arizona, Texas, and Florida in that order would have higher incarceration rates than the Seychelles. After the Seychelles, 25 other US states have the highest incarceration rates, followed by Turkmenistan.
• 462,000 people, or 1/5 people incarcerated in the US are sitting in jail awaiting their trials because they can’t afford the cash bail. About half of these people could bail themselves out if they had the financial means. In many cases this is only a few hundred dollars. There is no evidence that assigning cash bail makes a defendant more likely to show up to court. The US bail bond industry generates about $2 billion per year. The only other country that practices commercialization of cash bail is the Philippines.
• 30,807 cases in Wisconsin were analyzed over a 7 year period. White defendants were 25% more likely to to receive a plea bargain offer than black defendants. In misdemeanour cases this number went up to 75%.
• 15% of all people proven to be innocent after a guilty conviction pled guilty to that crime. For people exonerated of man slaughter that number rises to 49%. For drug crimes, 66%. For many people the cost of taking their case to trial was too high. [emphasis mine]