OmarComin'

I love how you corrected him in the snottiest way possible, even italicized "the America's."  Quick question though, what is America possessing in that statement that requires the apostrophe?
 
Perhaps you should relax your response to someone who likely isn't a native English speaker, when you're still struggling with grammar.

Probably a very small percentage

The professors at my undergrad university (state school, ~5,000 students) seemed to start out at $55,000/year and max out around $68,000/year (excluding the Chair).  There were no Full Professors there, who would have made more money.  The professors at the university I will earn my master's degree from (state school, ~20,000 students) appear to start out around $65,000/year and go up significantly from there.  Full Professors make just south of $100,000, and Distinguished Professors make over $100,000.
The best advice I can give you would be to look up the salaries of professors at universities similar to what you'd like to teach at.  If it's a state school, their salaries are public information.
I should point out that the professors at my undergrad university rarely ever produced research.  They were able to focus solely on teaching.  The professors at the university I'm at now are expected to always be working on research while teaching, typically, two classes a semester.  So, really, it all depends on what's more important to you.
I should also point out that the remainder of your student loan debt will be forgiven if you teach at a public university for 10 years while simultaneously making at least the minimum payment every month.  Of course, that could easily be changed under the current administration.

The professors at my undergrad university (state school, ~5,000 students) seemed to start out at $55,000/year and max out around $68,000/year (excluding the Chair).  There were no Full Professors there, who would have made more money.  The professors at the university I will earn my master's degree from (state school, ~20,000 students) appear to start out around $65,000/year and go up significantly from there.  Full Professors make just south of $100,000, and Distinguished Professors make over $100,000.
The best advice I can give you would be to look up the salaries of professors at universities similar to what you'd like to teach at.  If it's a state school, their salaries are public information.
I should point out that the professors at my undergrad university rarely ever produced research.  They were able to focus solely on teaching.  The professors at the university I'm at now are expected to always be working on research while teaching, typically, two classes a semester.  So, really, it all depends on what's more important to you.
I should also point out that the remainder of your student loan debt will be forgiven if you teach at a public university for 10 years while simultaneously making at least the minimum payment every month.  Of course, that could easily be changed under the current administration.

While I've never "chased a high," I understand your analogy. Notifications come so unexpectedly and few and far between that when your email does show one, there is an almost instant dopamine dump (at least for me). This is followed by a temporary inability to read complete sentences so I look for key words such as "congratulations" "accepted" and "regret." If the positive keywords are identified, the euphoric feeling is amazing. I then return to homeostasis and I can read the entire email in detail.

OP:
A student read your question and asked me the same -- I figured I'd reply to yours as well (though I'm generally not sure if it's cool for professors to post here so forgive me if not). Your post signals two things -- one, an interest in incarceration and health and two, an interest in policy. It sounds to me more like you care more about the former, not getting a policy degree per se, but I've listed a bunch of schools below to check out.
There are a number of sociology programs with interests in incarceration and health -- Penn Sociology (Schnittker), MN (Uggen), UW, Cornell, Harvard. In crim, UCI, Rutgers, John Jay, FSU. UCI also has an MA in policy that is headed by one of their crim faculty (Tita) so you could probably access that in CLS. Cinci is more CJ-corrections and yes has some people doing CJ policy. Maryland also has a number of faculty trained in policy programs and several faculty with incarceration interests. If you want a policy degree, look at Carnegie Mellon (Nagin) and Cornell PAM (Wildeman, does a lot of work on health) but these two programs are very different (George Mason also). Also check out Penn State. For all of these, it's a matter of taste (soc, crim, or policy), what job you want when you get done, and yes indeed you should check out faculty in each program, read some of their stuff, and figure out what excites you the most. Of course, you've missed all the deadlines for these places this year but this should get you going for next year. Hope this helps and good luck!

@smcg love it, just needed to make sure you aren't one of those monsters that turn the temperature to 80 degrees in a hotel room.
@AspiringScholar17 @RoadtoPhD My commons are cincy, FSU, and UIC if you mean University of Illinois at Chicago Criminology Law and Justice. I know UIC is also UC-Irvine so just being thorough.
Also, I just got an unofficial acceptance from FSU, official to follow according to program director. First one!!