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In his February 29, 2009 article, New High In U.S. Prison Numbers, Washington Post Staff Writer N.C. Aizenman reported:

"More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year and the federal government $5 billion more, according to a report released yesterday. With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second, according to a study by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States."

At the following website (Source: The Pew Center On The States: One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008):

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/419/states-prisons.html

...you can use the clickable map to "find your state's prison population, how much corrections cost your state, and the ratio of corrections to higher education spending. Information about each state selected is located beneath the map."

For example, by clicking on New York, you will find:

- In 2007, 62,620 people were behind bars in New York, representing a 1.1 drop over the previous year.
- New York spent $2.622 billion in fiscal year 2007 on corrections
- For every dollar spent on higher education, New York spent 73 cents on corrections.

However, the Pew Center On The States also brought out the fact that, over a period of two decades (1987 to 2007), the amount states spent on corrections more than doubled (+127%) while the increase in higher education spending has been moderate (+21%).

This statistic is a sad commentary on the current "State of the Union."

- Ed Smith