Crime, Injustice and Genocide Quiz

  1. Between 1900 and today the murder rate in the U.S. has steadily increased and today is the highest ever.
    • a. true
    • b. false

  2. Rank the following causes of death in the U.S. in the 1990s (highest to lowest).
    • a. cancer hazard and disease
    • b. violent crime
    • c. inadequate emergency medical care
    • d. occupational hazard and disease
    • e. heart disease

  3. During the past 25 years (1970-95), violent crime in the U.S. has:
    • a. increased by 15%
    • b. increased by almost half
    • c. more than doubled
    • d. increased somewhat

  4. During the past 25 years, the rate at which people have been incarcerated in the U.S. has:
    • a. slightly increased
    • b. slightly decreased
    • c. almost doubled
    • d. almost quadrupled
    • e. remained about the same

  5. Studies have shown that higher imprisonment rates will lower the crime rate.
    • a. true
    • b. false

  6. The incarceration rate for Black people in the U.S. is approximately ______________ that of White people.
    • a. the same as
    • b. 8 times
    • c. 2 times
    • d. 5 times

  7. The incarceration rate for Latinos in the U.S. is approximately ________________ that of White people.
    • a. the same as
    • b. 8 times
    • c. 4 times
    • d. 2 times

  8. Black people are 4 times as likely to be arrested on drug charges as White people, even though the two groups use drugs at almost the same rate.
    • a. true
    • b. false

  9. Although the incarceration rate for Black people in the U.S. is high, it is significantly less than the incarceration rate for Black people in South Africa.
    • a. true
    • b. false

  10. There are more Black men in prison and jails today than are attending college.
    • a. true
    • b. false

  11. It costs more to send a person to prison than to Harvard.
    • a. true
    • b. false

  12. Who benefits from the "prison and control-industrial complex"?
    • a. inmates
    • b. victims
    • c. corporations and government
    • d. none of the above

  13. U.S. inmates serve shorter prison terms today than in the past.
    • a. true
    • b. false

  14. Approximately _______________ percent of inmates entering prison today have been convicted of a violent crime.
    • a. 50%
    • b. 72%
    • c. 25%
    • d. 36%

  15. Politicians have proposed tough crime legislation because the public almost uniformly favors a "lock-em-up" solution to crime.
    • a. true
    • b. false

  16. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have criticized and condemned U.S. prisons for violations of the United Nations' Standard Minimum Rules for the treatment of prisoners.
    • a. true
    • b. false

  17. People of color as a whole are more likely to be in prison than their numbers in the population would suggest.
    • a. true
    • b. false

  18. What region of the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate, the most people on death row, and has carried out the greatest number of executions since 1976?
    • a. Northeast
    • b. South
    • c. West
    • d. Midwest

  19. By the late 1980s, the U.S. far and away led the western world in the rate of incarcerations of its own citizens.
    • a. true
    • b. false
Answers
  1. False. See Figure 2. This graph shows that the murder rate in the U.S. was about 10 per 100,000 in 1930 and again was about 10 per 100,000 in 1990.Similarly, the murder rate was 9.3 per 100,000 in 1993, almost the same as the 9.4 rate in 1973. What is most interesting, however, is the fact that the murder rate is related to changes in the economy.
     It tends to increase and peak in periods of economic crisis - e.g., the great depression of the 1930s and the current period of declining wages, high unemployment and underemployment, and downsizing and restructuring. It also tends to decline and was at a low point during the economic expansion of the post-World War II period, roughly from 1950 to the early 1970s. [Source: Committee to End the Marion Lockdown, Fall 1995, The Continuing Crime of Black Imprisonment, p. 6]

  2. The number of deaths annually in the early 1990s was roughly 717,000 deaths from heart disease, 520,600 from cancer, 34,600 from occupational hazard and disease, 24,000 from violent crime, and 20,000 from inadequate emergency medical care. [Sources: Jeffrey Reiman, 1990, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, p. 80; US Bureau of the Census, 1995, Statistical Abstract of the US: 1995, p. 93-Table 126]

  3. d. Increased somewhat. See Figures 3, 4, 5 and 6. Figures 3 and 4 show total and violent crime rates as measured by the National Criminal Victimization Survey (NCVS). The NCVS is considered by scholars to be the more accurate measure since the annual survey of about 50,000 households began in 1973. According to the NCVS total crime declined between 1973 and 1992 and violent crime remained about the same. In contrast, Figures 5 and 6 show crime rates as measured by the Uniform Crime Report (UCR). The UCR includes only crimes reported to the police and its numbers are considerably lower than the numbers in the NCVS. According to the UCR the total crime rate went up and down between 1973 and 1992, and is higher in 1992 than in 1973. In contrast, the violent crime rate steadily and dramatically increased between 1973 and 1992. Importantly, the crime rate tends to be higher in urban and poor neighborhoods - often where people of color are also concentrated. Recent allegations by reporter Gary Webb in the San Jose Meury News (Aug 18-20, 1996) raise concerns about the role of the CIA in introducing drugs -- especially crack cocaine -- into Compton in South-Central LA - feeding drug addiction and drug dealing and the resulting crime by those living in these impoverished and abandoned communities.

  4. d. Almost quadrupled. See Figure 1. Despite little or no change in the crime rate we are putting people in prison at an altogether unprecedented rate.

  5. False. Studies have shown that crime stems from societal causes and that higher imprisonment rates do not affect the crime rate. Similarly, it has been repeatedly shown that the death penalty does not deter murder.

  6. b. The rate for Blacks is approximately 8 times that of Whites.

  7. c. The rate for Latinos is approximately 4 times that of Whites.

  8. True. It is also true that the penalties are much higher for use of crack cocaine, a drug often used in poorer communities, than for powder cocaine, a drug preferred in wealthier communities.

  9. False. In 1992, the incarceration rate for Black people in the U.S. was 4.5 times as great as that for Black people in South Africa.

  10. True. In 1992 there were 583,000 Black men in prison and jails compared to 537,000 in college. Since that date, the margin has widened. Mauer and Huling identify the "Criminal Justice Control Rate" (CJCR) which includes those incarcerated in state and federal prisons and local jails, those on probation and on parole. The 1995 CJCR for Black men 20-29 years is 32.2%. Similar 1994 rates are 12.3% for Latino men, 6.7% for White men, 4.8% for Black women, 2.2% for Latino women, and 1.4% for White women. [Sources: Marc Mauer, 1994, Americans Behind Bars: The International Use of Incarceration 1992-93, Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project; Marc Mauer and Tracey Huling, 1995, Young Black Americans and the Criminal Justice System, Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, pp. 1-4]

  11. True. The extremely high cost of keeping a person in prison is almost entirely due to the physical plant and to the security measures involved, not for the needs of the prisoners. The Sentencing Project estimates the "Criminal Justice System" (CJS) cost for the 827,440 young Black men in the system in 1995 to be about $6 billion a year. The cost of incarcerating one young man in prison is roughly $35,000.00 a year. This is more than even the cost of attending elite Harvard University for 1 year. It is much more than the $5,400.00 average cost for tuition, fees, room and board in 1993 to attend a 4-year public college. From 1980 to 1995 the federal government decreased the education budget by $59 billion and increased the "corrections" budget by the same $59 billion. A coincidence? Probably not. [Sources: Mauer and Huling, 1995, p. 1; US Census, 1994, Statistical Abstract of the US: 1994, Washington, DC, p. 184 -Table 280; Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Oct/Nov 1995, Focus Political Trend Lett, Wash, DC, p. 2; Common Agenda Coalition and National Priorities Project, 1995, Creating a Common Agenda, p. 7]

  12. c. Corporations and government. With the end of the "Cold War" and the Soviet threat, the "military-industrial complex" is restructuring and downsizing. But today's "prison and control- industrial complex" is more than filling the gap! Over the last 20 years public and private spending for "crime control" has increased at more than twice the rate of military spending. In recent years $100 billion of our tax dollars is being spent each year on law enforcement. At the same time private security companies are taking in $65 billion annually. Funding for the CJS has increased 7- fold over the last 20 years, from $10 billion to $74 billion a year, including $25 billion for incarceration. In the last decade alone the government spent $34.6 billion of our tax dollars to build 1000 new prisons and jails to hold the soaring inmate population. The Corrections Corporation of America and other private prison companies are making millions of dollars in profit off of the politics of fear fueling the "prison and control-indusial complex." In 1983 these private companies were not in the prison business. But by 1994 they had $250 million in revenues and ran 88 prisons with about 50,000 inmate beds. Private facilities are growing at 4 times the rate of state facilities. This is BIG BUSINESS. Prison labor is another source of revenues. When inmates are paid as little as $.15 (15 cents) an hour compared to higher priced labor outside, the possibility for great profits is clear. Since 1990, 30 states have legalized the contracting out of prison labor to private companies. Correctional Industries Association suggests that by 2000, 30% of all state and federal inmates will work - yielding $8.9 billion in sales to those who control their labor. Norwegian criminologist Nils Christie "suggests a frightening scenario: that the raw material [of the prison-industrial complex] is prisoners, and industry will do what is necessary to guarantee a steady supply. For the supply of prisoners to grow, criminal justice policies must insure a sufficient number of incarcerated Americans regardless of whether crime is rising or not" (in Donziger, 1996, p. 87). [Sources: Steven Donziger, 1996, The Real War on Crime, NY: HarperPerennial, pp. 85-98; Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1994, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 1993, Washington, DC, pp. 2- 3; The Washington Post, 1995 (Aug 10), "Nation's Prison Population Soars over 1 Million," p. A25; Reese Erlich, 1995 (Fall), "Prison Labor" in Covert Action; Chistian Parenti, 1996 (Jan 1), "Making Prison Pay" in The Nation]

  13. False. Since 1923, the average length of stay for prisoners has always been about 2 years. However, because of harsher sentencing policies implemented in the1980s and 1990s, the average length of stay is increasing.

  14. c. 25 %. Most prisoners have committed crimes that involve no violence and little financial loss to the victim.

  15. False. While there has been a lot of rhetoric about the need for prisons and tougher legislation, most people, when asked, do not favor incarceration for a majority of the current prison population. In a recent national poll, four out of five Americans favored community corrections programs for offenders who are not dangerous.

  16. True. Many of the new control unit prisons in the U.S. have been cited by groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for practicing psychological torture. These prisons, ostensibly, were created to hold violent and disruptive inmates but have also been used to hold political prisoners and to curb dissent.

  17. True. In 1994 1,053,738 people were in state and federal prisons. Blacks are 44.1% of sentenced prisoners, but only 12% of the US population. Latinos are 17.6% of prisoners, but 10.2% of the population. " Other " prisoners of color - American Indians, Alaska Natives, Asians and Pacific Islanders - are 2.6% of prisoners and 4.2% of the population. But, it can be argued that American Indians - forcibly relocated onto the reservations and/or denied the legal right to practice their traditional religion and culture - are already experiencing a form of imprisonment. Also, by 1994 there were 18,929 noncitizens in federal prisons (up from 4,088 in 1984). In contrast, Whites are 35.8% of prisoners and 73.6% of the population. [Sources: US Bureau of Justice Statistics, Aug. 1995, Prisoners in 1994, pp. 1 and 9; US Bureau of Justice Statistics, Aug 1996, Noncitizens in the Federal Criminal Justice System, 1984-1994, p. 1; US Bureau of the Census, 1995, Statistical Abstract of the US: 1995, Washington, DC, p. 19-Table ]

  18. b. South. The 1994 incarceration rate for federal and state prisoners in the U.S. is 387 per 100,000 residents. The regional rates are 451 in the South, 285 in the Northeast, 297 in the Midwest, and 333 in the West. Since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated, over 5,000 people have been sentenced to death and today 3,061 remain on death row. Southern prisons hold more death row inmates than any other region. Since 1976, 330 death row inmates have been executed. Of these 274 or 83% have been in the South. Some have suggested that this state of affairs is the legacy of the history of the South. This history includes the genocide of Native Americans in this region, slavery, Reconstruction and the defeat of Reconstruction, the rapid rise of white supremacy, lynchings, and Jim Crow, and Civil Rights struggles. Today's rash of church burnings can be added to this list. [Sources: Amnesty International, June 1996, The Death Penalty in Georgia, Racist, Arbitrary and Unfair; Richard Dieter, June 1996, Twent Years of Capital Punishment, Washington, DC: Death Penalty Information Center; Jerome Scott and Walda Katz-Fishman, 1996, Working Paper: Race and Class Coalitions in the South, Atlanta, GA: Project South (9 Gammon Ave, SW, Atlanta 30315)]

  19. True. By the late 1980s, the U.S. had a much higher incarceration rate than any other country in world. In 1994 1,053,738 inmates were in state and federal prisons and 455,500 were in local jails - for a total of just over 1.5 million. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia's incarceration rate has increased and, at times, surpassed even that of the U.S. Today, the U.S. and Russia continue to, far and away, lead the world in imprisoning their own citizens. [Source: US Bureau of Justice Statistics, Aug. 1995, Prisoners in 1994, pp. 1-2]

This quiz was developed in October 1996 by the Project South Washington Book Forum and the Criminal Injustice and Police State Working Group. We would like to acknowledge our debt to the Committee to End the Marion Lockdown whose Crime and Incarceration Quiz and Figures from The Continuing Crime of Black Imprisonment in their Fall 1995 issue of U.S. IncarcerNation - Walkin' Steel have been reproduced with permission.


translate | support
about | contact


top of page