U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) The Prison Industrial (Retirement) Complex, by the Numbers. Human Rights Watch released a report last week, Old Behind Bars: The Aging Prison Population in the United States, that details a new challenge created by the extreme sentences dished out over the past generation.
According to the report, in 2010 there were 124,400 prisoners—8 percent of inmates—aged 55 or older, which is an increase of 57.3 percent from 2009. This is due to the number of inmates serving life sentences and the many others serving sentences of 20 years or longer. Roughly half of people who get life sentences are black, according to the Sentencing Project. The report pointed out that about one in 10 state prisoners is serving a life sentence and 11 percent have sentences longer than 20 years. Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted. Download Printable Document Each year, the FBI publishes data concerning the felonious and accidental line-of-duty deaths and assaults of local, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement officers.
Tabular presentations include weapons used, the presence of body armor, and circumstances surrounding murders of and assaults on officers. In addition, the data concerning the officers killed in the line of duty include information about the victim officers (e.g., age, sex, race, height, and number of years of law enforcement experience) and information about the assailants (e.g., age, sex, race, criminal histories, and the number of assailants arrested). Narrative presentations provide detailed summaries concerning the death of each officer feloniously killed in the line of duty that year. Welcome to the United States Department of Justice.