• Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday is coming up. What to get the man who had something, then was imprisoned and had nothing and now has everything? [AA]

• How 'bout something we don't know: "Biased system packs prisons with young black men" [PB]

• Police are searching for anyone with information about the "improvised explosive device" that ripped through a Times Square military recruiting station early this morning. [CR]

• "Lesson of Defeat: Obama Comes Out Punching" [NYT]

• Bill Cosby keeps the pressure on in Ohio. [WTOL]

We did it, you guys! It took a couple hundred years and a whole lot of broken promises from federal, state and local governments, but, finally, one out of every 100 adults in the United States is in a correctional facility.

The federal prison population swelled to 1.6 million last year. Add to that the 723,000 criminals housed in local jails, and that's one whole percent of the nation's adult population that goes to sleep behind bars. And, of course, this: "Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups." Can you guess to which "groups" the New York Times is referring? I think you can.

One in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 is imprisoned in some way (and that's not counting mentally). The rate of black women between the ages of 35 and 39 who are serving time is in lockstep with the national rate, one in 100, but that percentage drops to one in 355 for white women of the same age.

The researchers behind this data – like many, many of their contemporaries – say it's high time America's criminal justice system seeks other options to treat nonviolent offenders, specifically those whose crimes involve drugs and alcohol (DUI, marijuana possession, etc).

Conclusion: This is hardly anything new, unfortunately. The amount of information suggesting that our prisons are careening out of control seems to be directly proportional to their growth rate, and nothing's changing. To quote Mugatu: "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"

Get ready to be depressed: more than three times as many black people live in jail than in college dorms!

Get ready to roll your eyes: this doesn't include students who live off campus. Or commuter students. Not to mention the different lengths of time a person would be living in jail vs. living in a dorm.

Still, the fact that a black person is more likely to live in a jail cell than in a college dorm is an upsetting, if misleading, stat. Just ask Marc Morial.

CONTINUED »

Foxy Brown's jail experience sounds lonely and really embarrassing, but i don't think she knows "suffering" if she thinks that's what she's doing.

Down-and-pout diva Foxy Brown is holed up in a cell at Rikers Island desperate for human contact as she spends her days flipping through the Bible, guzzling orange soda and fretting about her floundering hair weaves, former in mates said yesterday.

"Everyone who passes by looks at her - she's usually sleeping or reading her books," said Teresa Pandolfo, 39, of Park Slope, Brooklyn, who was housed in a cellblock near the slapper-rapper…

"Her hair looks like whoever did it ran. That's how much the weave is coming apart," she said.

Why is fake hair such an integral part of most Foxy stories? She thew the wig glue at the salespeople in Florida, she got her weave snatched during the Great Hearing Aid Robbery, and now, well, her weave seems to have been pretty offensive to her former cell mate. Maybe she should try a natural and see if that leads her away from a life of petty crime.

[NYP]

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