Talk:United Kingdom prison population

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[edit] Population Figures are Ambiguous

The sentance "In 1900 there were 14,460 male prisoners, 2,980 female prisoners. In 1991 the total prison population was 42,000 and in 1992 it was 45,800." Means nothing without knowing what the population in prison per unit of total population was. Its hard to say whether 14,460 was alot without actually knowing what the population of the united kingdom was in 1900 and 1991. Also its ambiguous, the United Kingdom in 1900 was much larger than it is today, encorporating most of what is now the commonwealth - surely though 14,460 does not include those incarcerated in India, Australia etc.? Can someone clarify this for me please. If I get no response in 72 hours I shall research the matter myself and make the appropriate changes. Its undesirable to quote lengthy amounts of ambiguous data, this whole section begining with that sentance falls under that category I think.

Also I'd like to add that I think this article is generally lacking detail and inadequatley referenced. No offense intended to its author as it is well written - just lacking in actual useful or comparable information and links matched with unclear data and references. The new statesman (a far left magazine) seems like an odd source of reliable statistics of this nature, surely the home office would be the appropraite source of statistics and I'm sure they must be available. Refering to the japanese equivalent of this article it highlights some of this ones shortcomings. Perhaps using that as a base on which to enlarge this would be advisable.

[edit] US numbers

(although this is far short of the 702 per 100,000 in the United States).

This is wrong; the graph here [1] indicates that the US figure has never been over 500 per 100,000. Pretzelpaws 17:43, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps not - tucked away inside this report [2] there is a figure of 738 per 100,000 for mid-year 2005 - so I'm confused... Pretzelpaws 17:57, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Propbably best to raise that as an issue on the US version of this where ever that is. Theres not much cohesion between all the different prison related articles as it doesnt seem to be a big area of interest or wiki-research. I suspect someone in the US is far more likely to have an answer than someone in the UK about that. I imagine it also varies immensly between different states.

[edit] Early history and political influences

The thought came to me, that figures on their own do not convey an awful lot, so I have added some background. I am not happy with it ( it's so easy to go off on a tangent) but I thought it would serve to attract some thought as to what could be added to the article, so that, more sense can be made of it.--Aspro 19:12, 14 October 2006 (UTC)