I don’t know if this means that the problems with prison health care aren’t as bad as they are reported or perhaps that they need to be put into context of what dangers people face outside prison walls. Whatever the reason, it is surprising to hear that.

State prison inmates, particularly blacks, are living longer on average than people on the outside, the government said Sunday.

Inmates in state prisons are dying at an average yearly rate of 250 per 100,000, according to the latest figures reported to the Justice Department by state prison officials. By comparison, the overall population of people between age 15 and 64 is dying at a rate of 308 a year.

For black inmates, the rate was 57 percent lower than among the overall black population – 206 versus 484. But white and Hispanic prisoners both had death rates slightly above their counterparts in the overall population.

It’s likely Tookie wouldn’t have lived as long as he did if he hadn’t been incarcerated. It is probably much safer to be a gang leader on death row than to be one on the streets of Los Angeles. In LA, executions happen much quicker than they do in the state prison system. Even if you shoot people and then brag about the sounds your victims make when dying like Tookie did you are pretty much assured several decades of appeals and celebrity endorsements from people like Mike Farrell.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 28th, 2007 at 9:02 pm by Insider and is filed under Not the conventional wisdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.