8.1: A Brief History of The Philosophies of Punishment

In the News: One of the more frequently used statistics in the news about crime is homicides in the United States. Often, you will hear something about a homicide rate or the number of homicides in a state, or a city for a particular year. An interesting clarifier about this number is that it typically does not include a number of deaths in prison. Deaths in prison occur every year, yet these are not normally counted in any statistic. In 2014, there were approximately 3,927 deaths that occurred in prisons in the United States. There are a variety of reasons for these deaths, to include homicide. For more information on this, look up – Mortality in Correctional Institutions (MCI). This is also formerly known as Deaths in Custody Reporting Program (DCRP). The Bureau of Justice Statistics houses and publishes data on this phenomenon. Additionally, this is a voluntary reporting structure, which may actually not capture all deaths that occur in prison. https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=243