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What is the growth industry in Texas? Prisons: Texas has the distinction of having more prison inmates than any other state. An astonishing 5% of the adult population of Texas – about 700,000 – are under some form of criminal justice control.
In Texas, the incarcaration rate for African-Americans is 7 times that of whites.
Despite the extraordinary imprisonment statistics, Texas has worse crime rates than nearly every other state. And to make room for additional inmates, Texas also leads the nation in the execution of its prisoners. According to Todesstrafe.de, Texas has executed 15 citizens so far in 2005. Of course, this is a far cry from the 40 executions in 2000, George W. Bush’s last year as governor of Texas. In fact, Bush still holds the record of executing more human beings (152) than any other governor in the history of the United States.
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Thank you for all these statistics.
Did you see “The Life of David Gale” with Kate Winslet, Kevin Spacey, Laura Linney and other first class actors?
How would you compare the magnitude of crimes in Texas every month with those in France right now?
Many bloggers and journalists criticize that France can’t get the riots under control and you reported about the bloggers Schadenfreude in your last post. According to your new post, Texas has been unable to reduce its high crime rate for many years.
Imprisoning soo many criminals and the threat of the death penalty apparently do not deter people from committing crimes…
Or would there be even more crimes in Texas without such a high rate of imprisonment and executions?
Back to France: Setting cars on fire and attacking humans are crimes. How many crimes take place in France in comparision to Texas?
And then: Who is less able to get crime under control? France or Texas?
Do Texans commit crimes for the same reasons the French are rioting?
Joerg –
I don’t think you can compare the French riots to the general crime statistics in Texas – much of which is due to drug-related activity. The French riots are most likely a short-lived phenomenon.
Also, there is no evidence that the death penalty is a deterrent for serious crime. On the contrary, there would seem to a negative correlation: those states that execute prisoners generally experience higher murder rates. Texas is a good example.