Murder, death rates in US state prisons report [US DOJ] News
Murder, death rates in US state prisons report [US DOJ]

Suicide and Homicide in State Prison and Local Jails, US Department of Justice, August 22, 2005 [report indicating that prison death rates for homicide, suicide and AIDS have declined substantially in state corrections facilities since 1980]. Excerpt:

Over the past two decades, State prison and local jail inmate mortality rates have displayed some dynamic changes. Suicide was the leading cause of death among jail inmates in 1983 (129 per 100,000 inmates); by 1993 that rate had been cut by more than half (54 per 100,000 inmates), and illness/natural cause (67 per 100,000) had become the most common cause of jail deaths. By 2002 the jail suicide rate (47 per 100,000) had fallen to nearly a third of the 1983 rate. Rates of death from AIDS-related causes in jails also declined; the 2002 rate (8 per 100,000) was less than half of the 1988 rate (20 per 100,000). As a result of these reductions, the overall mortality rate in local jails dropped 37% between 1983 and 2002.

Read the full text of the report here [PDF]. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Mao Zedong widow sentenced to death in China

On January 25, 1981, Jiang Qing, the widow of Mao Zedong, was sentenced to death by a special court in China. The charges stemmed primarily from Jiang's role in the Cultural Revolution. Saying "I was Chairman Mao's dog. I bit whomever he asked me to bite," Qing unsuccessfully argued that she was merely acting at the direction of her late husband, who had died five years earlier. In 1983, Jiang's sentence was commuted to life in prison so that she would have "time to repent." Her official trial documents have still not been released.

Charles Manson and "family" convicted of Tate murders

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