about 8,000 to 16,000 inmates. And . . . the prison population continued to escalate--between 1981 and 1990 the prison population increased from 30,000 to over 49,000 inmates" (Turner & Petersilia, 34-35). Across America, male inmate populations swelled from about "one-half million in 1980 to nearly 1.4 million in 1993" (Benedict & Huff-Corzine, 237).
With approximately 69.6 million males in the American workforce, the 1,350,500 men incarcerated in 1993 represent a staggering 2 percent of the workforce. About this, Freeman says the following:
Approximately the same share of long-term unemployed men are on the dole in many western European countries. For every person incarcerated in the United States, approximately 2.1 were on probation and 0.5 were on parole--an additional 3,511,300 men with criminal involvement. All told, 7 percent as many men were 'under the supervision of the criminal justice system' (incarcerated, paroled or probated) as were in the workforce (26).
Freeman further notes that incarcerated black me
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