I saw someone today claim that 90% of prison inmates had children and, again, 90% of inmates had been victims of sexual or physical abuse when they themselves were children. Are those numbers correct? They seem incredibly high.
The person making the claim was a guest on Oprah. I was getting my hair done and the show was on in the salon, so I couldn’t hear much of what was said, including the guest’s name. However, I’m pretty sure I heard the 90% claims correctly. I poked around in Google for a bit, but my google fu is pathetic.
The number of parents in prison may have been anyone who served time during that entire year, whereas the 1.3 million is a snapshot of the population at a given time, but perhaps that’s good enough for ballpark info. I dunno, I’m no statistics major. Or minor. Hell, I’m not even sure if I spelled it right.
The key to understanding this is HOW they define abuse. You have to be careful because some studies will consider even a spanking to be physical abuse. Whether it is or not is open to debate. Does abuse mean just physcial? I am very leary of statistics unless I can see the questions asked to arrive at those numbers and I have found any reliable source of statistic will allow you to look at the questioneer