I really should have blogged about this much sooner, but slipped through the cracks of my mind... Maybe about a week ago, I happened to be flipping though the TV channels and I found the Television broadcast of the NPR Radio show with Marty Moss-Coane called "Radio Times."
She was talking about the issue of prison overcrowding and had two guests on. I forget who they were :( But one gentleman said something that really surprised me...
There are currently about 9,000+ prisoners in jail (in the city of Philly). And I don't remember the statistic exactly but it was either 60 or 70% of them are in jail awaiting a trial! These are people who for whatever reason have not posted bail, or were denied bail.
Not only does that statistic boggle my mind, but I was also very surprised that there were that few amount of people in prison. The 2000 Census has the population at 1.5 million people.
No other real comments here just that both statistics really surprised me. I though the prison system held much more than that.
I did find this reference on the web.
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There is also about 15,000 people from Philadelphia in state prisons outside of the city. http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/pennsylvania.html
Hey thanks for that link Anon. That was interesting.
That does at least bring the numbers up closer to what I had envisioned in my head, 15,000+3,000 = 18,000 for a city that holds about 1.5 million people. About 1%.
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