WEST VIRGINIANS LOCKED-UP INCREASES THREE-FOLD - State Leads Nation In Strip Clubs

(09/26/2005)

By Bob Weaver West Virginia, long accustomed to hitting "worst lists," should be enlightened this morning to find the state on two interesting lists. One is having among the highest number of prisoners in the USA and the other is having the most strip clubs per capita. During the past 15 years, the number of prison inmates the state has locked-up has increased three times. Have West Virginians become three times more criminal than before? Not likely. Why did the number of state prison inmates leap from 1,575 in 1990 to 5,252 today? We have a lot of new, expensive jails. The Mountain State's incarceration rate is soaring much more rapidly than America's rate. Researchers predict that the number of West Virginia prisoners will climb to 7,000 by 2014, unless current justice practices are revised. The USA now has an estimated 2,300,000 prisoners in jail, the highest number of any country in the world, or one-in-every-138 citizens. West Virginia, according to a recent study, has more strip clubs per population than any US state. There are 53 strip clubs statewide, or 2.9 per 100,000 population. Oregon has the second highest proliferation, with 93 clubs, or 2.6 per 100,000.

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