AJS - American Judicature Society
State Judicial Conduct Organizations
Organizations From Each State Established To Investigate Allegations Of Misconduct By State Court Judges
Federal Bureau of Prisons QUICK FACTS (September 2004)
Number of Institutions, Total Population, Inmates by Security Level, Inmates by Gender, Inmates by Race, Inmates by Ethnicity, Inmates by Citizenship, Average Inmate Age, Sentence Imposed, Type of Offense, BOP Population Over Time/Drug Offenders as a Percentage of All Sentenced Offenders, Staff by Gender, Staff by Race/Ethnicity
Adult Correctional Population (1980-2003)
The number of adults in the correctional population has been increasing. In 2003, 6.9 million people were under some form of correctional supervision including:
probation, prison, jail and parole
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics Correctional Surveys
(The Annual Probation Survey, National Prisoner Statistics,
Survey of Jails, and The Annual Parole Survey)
Prison Statistics
At yearend 2003 there were 3,405 black male prisoners per 100,000 black males in the United States in prison, compared to 1,231 Hispanic male inmates per 100,000 Hispanic males and 465 white male inmates per 100,000 white males.
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics
Crime and Victims Statistics
According to the BJS National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), in 2003:
Violent crime rates have declined since 1994, reaching the lowest level ever recorded in 2003.
Property crime decline through 2002 and begin to stabilize in 2003.
(Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics)
Uniform Crime Reports
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports:
The violent crime rate decreased 3.9% from 2002 to 2003. From 1994 to 2003 the rate fell 33.4%.
The property crime rate decreased 1.2% from 2002 to 2003. From 1994 to 2003, the rate fell 23%. The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports Program (UCR) collects information from local law enforcement agencies about crimes reported to police. The UCR crime index includes seven offenses; homicide, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft.
(Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics)
2003: "With 6,600,000 in prison and jail or on probation or parole, there are 8,800,000 persons either under the control of the correctional system or employed in the criminal justice sector."
Read full text here
No longer are prisons correctional institutions
2003: "California has a total population of 33 million people and 159,390 inmates. Germany has 82 million people and 56,000 inmates. Indeed, the California DOC employs nearly as many people as Germany imprisoned."
Read full text here (pdf)
Prison Proliferation 1900-1995 (maps) The Right to Vote:
"Many nations have disenfranchisement of sentenced prisoners, in the USA voting privileges are denied to prisoners by some states, however several others (most nations of the European Union) allow prisoners to vote, regardless of time served, nature of the crime, etc. Some countries (and U.S. states) also deny the right to vote to those convicted of serious crimes, even after they are released from prison. In some cases (e.g. the felon disfranchisement laws found in many U.S. States) the denial of the right to vote is automatic on conviction of a serious criminal offence; in other cases (e.g. provisions found in many parts of continental Europe) the denial of the right to vote is an additional penalty that the court can choose to impose, over and above the penalty of imprisonment, ...."
Read full text here
(Source: www.wordiq.com) The Sentencing Project: Felony Disenfranchisement The National Mail Voter Registration Form (in English and Spanish) Voter Registration Application (pdf)
Huff and Partners, who are law experts, created a data base of 205 false conviction cases in the 90s and they discovered that in nearly ½ of those cases eye witnesses' misidentification played the biggest role.
In 1 out of 10 cases perjury by witnesses or negligence by criminal justice officers were sited as other causes of false conviction.
False or coerced confessions surfaced in almost 8% of the cases studied.
The Huff study concluded that several causes of false conviction often worked simultaneously.
The following observation was made:
If we had to isolate a single "system dynamic" that pervades large numbers of cases, we would probably describe it as police and prosecutorial overzealousness:
The anxiety to solve a case, the carelessness in which one having such anxiety is willing to believe, on smallest evidence of the most neglectful nature, that the culprit is at hand; the willingness to use improper, unethical and illegal means to obtain a conviction, when the prosecution at hand wants to believe the person accused is guilty.
Innocence Project:
Here you can check the statistical survey on factors leading to wrongful convictions (2001).
RACE OF VICTIM
80% Caucasian
12% African American
5% Latino
1% Various
2% Unknown
RACE OF EXONERATED DEFENDANT
61% African American
25% Caucasian
12% Latino
2% Unknown"
(Source: Innocence Project)
The Snitch System (pdf)
Northwestern University School of Law/ Center on Wrongful Convictions
Misconduct in the Judicial System The Complicity of Judges in the Generation of Wrongful Convictions by Hans Sherrer Arrested Judges Harmful Error Data Search Breaking the Rules - Who suffers when a prosecutor is cited for misconduct? Anatomy of Misconduct Here you read the full text of: "There's much to learn when a trial goes terribly wrong", By Steve Weinberg
Lesson One: Premature conclusions can ensnare the innocent.
Lesson Two: Lack of solid evidence does not prevent charges from being filed.
Lesson Three: Prosecutors can tilt the system of checks and balances.
Lesson Four: Prosecutors should cautiously evaluate testimony and confessions.
Lesson Five: Prosecutors should not rely uncritically on their scientific and forensic experts.
Lesson Six: Some prosecutors still withhold evidence.
Lesson Seven: A pattern of excluding potential jurors by race or gender should raise a warning.
Lesson Eight: Juries empowered to impose the death penalty might be more likely to convict.
Lesson Nine: Improper opening statements and closing arguments and direct and cross-examinations can infect the fairness of a trial.
Lesson Ten: Prosecutors should not interfere with defense access to prosecution witnesses or tamper with witnesses for either side.
Lesson Eleven: Appellate courts sometimes ignore exculpatory evidence withheld due to misconduct.
Lesson Twelve: Individuals from outside the criminal justice system are often the only post-conviction hope of those denied a fair hearing.
Lesson Thirteen: Police and prosecutors sometimes do little to search for the actual perpetrators of a crime after learning the original suspect is innocent.
(Source: The Center for Public Integrity)
