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.....Crime rates have dropped in the United States over the past 15 years, yet prison populations have soared. The U.S. incarceration rate now exceeds that of other industrialized nations by five times or more, with almost 2.3 million people behind bars and another 5 million on parole or probation.
..........— Bruce Bower, Washington D.C. based science writer, "'Incarceration hot spots' inculcate a vicious brand of hopelessness," Science News, September 11th, 2010; Vol.178 #6.
.....Certain disadvantaged sections of cities have acted as incarceration hot spots in the midst of a general downturn in crime, he reported August 16. Ballooning incarceration rates in these poor, predominantly black neighborhoods, especially among young men, create a sense of collective cynicism and fatalism that fuels further misconduct and imprisonment, [Harvard University sociologist Robert] Sampson said.
..........— Ibid.
.....Teenagers and children expressed some of the grimmest attitudes. "Many kids said they didn't expect to live past age 25 or to avoid ending up in prison," Sampson said. Researchers need to focus on how the concentration of incarceration within certain poor neighborhoods undermines the quality of life for everyone living there, he added.
..........— Ibid.
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