* There are 16 federal agencies that employ at least 500 police. Three-fifths of federal cops work for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Bureau of Prisons, the FBI, and U.S. Customs. Together these four agencies employ a little over 50,000 cops. The number of state and local police with arrest powers increased by 59,000 between 1992 and 1996.

In 1975, there were 211 state and local cops per 100,000 people. By 1998, it was up to 247 per 100,000. The 1996 Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies put the number of local police at 663,535. These figures do not include military police, campus police, certain housing and transit police, and railroad police.

* In 1990, the incarceration rate was 1 in every 218 U.S. residents. By 1999, the figure went up to 1 in every 147. From 1990 to 1999, federal, state, and local governments had to accommodate an additional 83,743 inmates per year, or 1,610 per week. In the year ending June 30, 1999, the number of inmates held in jail rose by 13,481; in state prison, by 34,238; and in federal prison, by 10,614. A Department of Justice press release dated July 23, 2000, begins: "The number of adult men and women under the supervision of Federal, state, and local correctional authorities rose to a record 6.3 million in 1999.... This number represents 3.1 percent of all adult residents in the United States, or one in every 32 adults." The press release goes on to explain that there were 1.9 million more people under correctional supervision in 1999 than in 1990. And of course, "Blacks were more than a third of probationers (1,310,000) and nearly half of parolees (312,000)."

The Bureau of Justice Statistics prepared a special table called "Lifetime Likelihood of Going to State or Federal Prison." "Assuming that recent incarceration rates remain unchanged," says the report, "an estimated 1 out of every 20 persons can be expected to serve time in prison during their lifetime." The report estimates that Hispanic males have a 1 in 6 chance, and "newborn Black males have a greater than 1 in 4 chance of going to prison during their lifetimes."

* At the end of 1998, thirty-seven states plus the federal government had 3,452 people on Death Row. The average age of the Death Row inmate is 28. Two percent are 17 or younger. Some 4, 446 people have been executed in the United States between 1930 and 1999; 3,138 of this number were executed between 1930 and 1951. Since the death penalty was reintroduced in 1976, 587 have been put to death, about half in the last four years.

The fight against this monstrous machine of class terror is essential for the survival and organization of working people and our unions.

Bill Kalman
Miami, Florida