-- via Freakonomics -- The Bureau of Justice Statistics recently released data on the causes of death among inmates in state prisons.
In 2005, 56 prisoners were murdered. There are roughly 2 million inmates held in state prisons, meaning that the homicide rate per 100,000 prisoners last year was only 2.8.
That number is less than half the rate of New York City (6.6 per 100,000) and an order of magnitude lower than Baltimore (42 per 100,000).
Indeed, of the 66 largest cities in the United States, only El Paso, Tex. and Honolulu, Hawaii have lower homicide rates than the state prisons.
Technorati Tags: homicide rate, magic numbers, Bureau of Justice Statistics
