CAMPUS HOUSING EXCEEDS PRISONS

The number of students living in on-campus housing exceeds the number
of Americans in prisons for the first time ever, according to a U.S.
Census Bureau report.

While the number of inmates has reached an all-time high of two
million people, nearly 300,000 more are living on a college campus,
according to the September report.

However, the apparently good news has another side: There are three
times as many black people living in prison cells than in dorms.

The ratio is only slightly lower for Hispanics, at 2.7 inmates for
every one in college housing.

Penn State professor of sociology Sam Richards accredits the disparity
to what has been dubbed "the war on drugs."

"The fact is that blacks and Latinos are as likely as whites to use
and sell illegal drugs," Richards said. "They far outnumber whites
when it comes to arrests and imprisonment, however."

Richards said 70 percent of drug users and sellers are white, but
blacks are arrested at a consistently higher rate.

"People just aren't looking for them," he said about white
people.

The census data showed that blacks made up 41 percent of the nation's
inmates in 2006, but only account for 12.3 percent of the population,
according to the 2000 census data.

The breakdown of inmates at the Pennsylvania State Correctional
Institute at Rockview mirrors this trend.

Jeffrey Rackovan, assistant to the superintendent at Rockview, said
that of the 2,065 inmates at the state penitentiary, 895 are black and
230 are Hispanic. Rackovan was not familiar with the recent census
data and could not comment further.

As of 2000, whites made up 85.4 percent of Pennsylvania's population.
Blacks made up 10 percent of the population and Hispanics 3.2 percent.

Michael Massoglia, assistant professor in the department of sociology
and crime, law and justice, said blacks and Hispanics do not reach
college at the same rate as whites. Non-Hispanic whites made up about
73 percent of the nation's 2.3 million living in college housing,
according to the census.

"There is a strong correlation between education and incarceration,"
Massoglia said. "A black man without a college degree has a 60 percent
chance of going to prison."

The census data supports this number. Nearly 40 percent of inmates
lack a high school diploma or the equivalent.

Massoglia also cited the war on drugs as a leading culprit in the
disproportionate amount of black and Hispanic inmates but attributed
the fact to an overall social stigma with a political climate toward
sentencing.

"There is just generally a more punitive attitude from society," he
said. "We also know that [getting arrested] stunts education
attainment; it decreases the likelihood you'll graduate."

The data showed an upward trend in the number of blacks and Hispanics
in prison since the 1980s. In 1980, the number of blacks living in
college dorms was relatively equal to the number of blacks living in
prisons.

"Since the 1970s, the prison system has grown to be eight times as
large," Massoglia said. "The size of the penal system has gotten big
enough where we have to consider it alongside the education system in
the U.S."

Massoglia compared the size of the U.S. prison system to that of Penn
State's graduating class.

"About 650,000 people get released from prison a year," he said.
"There are 575,000 graduates with a [bachelor of arts degree] from
Penn State. In one year, we let more people out of prison than we've
educated in total at Penn State."

According to the census study, prison inmates nationally are 37
percent white, 41 percent black, 19 percent Hispanic and 3 percent
other. Ninety percent of prison inmates are men, down from 94 percent
in 1980.

"There is institutionalized racism built into the entire justice
system," Richards said. "The number of [blacks and Hispanics] being
thrown into prison for the drug war is clearly disproportional to
their population."

The data released from the Census Bureau does have its limitations.
The numbers do not include college students who live off campus or
breakdowns of the data by gender or age, and while 96 percent of
students living in college housing is made up of students ages 18 to
24, only 19 percent of inmates are in that age group.