The US continued to have the world’s largest incarcerated population at 2.3 million, and the world’s highest per capita incarceration rate at 752 inmates per 100,000 residents.

In December 2010 Human Rights Watch reported on the unnecessary pre-trial detention of thousands of people accused of minor crimes in New York City due to their inability to pay even small amounts of bail. Almost 90 percent of those arrested in 2008 for non-felony crimes who had bail set at US$1,000 or less were incarcerated pre-trial solely because they could not post bail.

The US Supreme Court decided in May that the state of California must reduce prison overcrowding. California prisons have failed to provide adequate medical and mental health care for decades, and a lower court panel found that prison under-staffing and severe overcrowding had led to such substandard care. The panel directed the state to significantly cut its prison population to improve care; the US Supreme Court agreed.

In February 2011 the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued its long-overdue proposed standards to implement the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). While some standards meet the 2009 PREA Commission recommendations, several proposed standards are sig nificantly weaker. For example, the proposed DOJ standards do not clearly require facilities to be staffed sufficiently to prevent, detect, and respond to the sexual abuse of prisoners. The standards would leave survivors of sexual assault without legal remedy because they were unable to comply with unduly strict internal grievance procedures. The proposed standards also explicitly exclude immigration detention facilities from coverage. At this writing the final PREA standards have not been issued.

This year Nevada, Hawaii, Idaho, and Rhode Island enacted laws restricting the shackling of pregnant prisoners, bringing the number of states with such laws to 14



Human Rights Watch - WORLD REPORT 2012 - USA – pp. 653-665