Vigils#Protests to Greet America's Two Millionth Prisoner on February 15 2/11/00

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Two Million is Too Many," Say Drug Policy and Penal Reformers

WASHINGTON, DC: Protests and vigils in over 30 cities will greet the day crime experts predict our nation will incarcerate more than two million people. The Justice Policy Institute reported last December that America's prison and jail population would top two million on February 15th, 2000. The JPI study "The Punishing Decade: Prison and Jail Estimates at the Millennium" reports:

  • The US has the world's highest incarceration rate, surpassing Russia and China, and the world's largest prison population. With less than five percent of the world's population, the US now has fully one-quarter of the world's prisoners.
  • There are six times as many Americans behind bars as are imprisoned in the 12 countries making up the entire European Union, even though those countries have 100 million more citizens than the US.
  • Nearly one in three African American boys born this year will spend some time in prison.
From New York City, into Texas, through California and the Pacific Northwest, vigils of protest will be held near jails, courthouses and prisons as part of nationwide events drawing attention to the social and financial costs of imprisoning two million Americans, the largest prison population in the world.

"Two million is too many," says Nora Callahan, Director of the November Coalition, a national reform group calling for alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders. "In thirty cities we will call on state and federal governments to stop breaking up families and destroying our communities. Prison is not the solution to every social problem," says Callahan.

Detailed contact and location information can be found online at http://www.november.org/twomilliontoomany.html, or call the November Coalition at (509) 684-1550. We list the current set of locations below. Visit http://www.cjcj.org/punishingdecade/punishingpr.html for further information on the Justice Policy Institute study.