US: 5% of world's population, 25% of worlds prisoners!!! "Incarceration rate stuns experts"

[elehhhhna]

U.S. leads the world in the number of prison inmates
Incarceration rate stuns experts


The spike in U.S. incarceration rates is recent. From 1925 to 1975, the rate remained stable, around 110 people in prison per 100,000 people. It shot up with the movement to get tough on crime in the late 1970s. The U.S. has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners.

Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.

The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/nation/5722628.html

[eShirl]

1. "we're number ONE!" n/t

[Mandate My Ass]

2. the prison industrial complex is competing with the MIC

to rob americans of their freedoms and treasury. Privatized prisons are making a lot of repukes very very rich.

[BanzaiBonnie]

9. Follow the money

It IS an industry that makes money.


Disgusting.

[elizfeelinggreat]

11. absolutely

true. And shameful.

[Fumesucker]

3. I watched an OP on "what the most important things to do are"

The other day right here in GD, and not a single damn one mentioned our insane incarceration rate and changing it.

Put succinctly, Americans do not give the slightest damn about it.

[L. Coyote]

4. Police "business" ??

The cost is also the highest!!

How many people are taken out of the productive economy, as prisoners and as staff to imprison others?

[Romulox]

5. War on Drugs. Which politician is speaking out???

[indepat]

6. Ludicrous RW drug laws, immigration laws, minimum wages, tough on crime

posturing, corporate welfare and welfare for the affluent via regressive tax policies which promote extreme wealth among the very few will do the trick every time: this is what the extreme RW has always wanted and they've gotten practically everything they want. And have a good day America. :D

[Fumesucker]

8. Don't blame the drug laws on the right wing..

The left supports them and votes for them with almost as much enthusiasm.

Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich: Those are the only two politician in the US who support ending the drug war.

Barack Obama supports the drug war, hypocrite par excellence.

[indepat]

12. Yes, Dems are scared shitless that they might not be tough enough on every thing the RW

is tough on: and just look at what this knuckling under to the RW has wrought upon us as a people and a nation. :D

[High Plains]

15. Don't blame the drug laws on the left wing!!!

I don't know any socialists, communists, or anarchists calling for insane drug laws.

I do know a lot of liberal Democrats who have, though.

[Fumesucker]

19. Show me the politicians speaking out for ending the drug war..

Other than Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul and maybe Bill Richardson there basically aren't any.

If the policies Barack Obama advocates were applied to him as a young man then he would never have been able to even become a lawyer, let alone run for president.

[OwnedByFerrets]

7. Corporate greed at its finest.....

Not only are "for profit" prisons abundant, the spin off corporations are big also. The more prisoners, the bigger the profits.

[sam sarrha]

10. It got POLLUTED with ReThuglican POLITICS...the Fecal touch. the Death Penalty ia a Blood Sacrifice

for votes when a politician promises th kill prisoners in custody if elected

[tabasco]

13. We must protect ourselves from dangerous marijuana felons!

I live in fear that someone might smoke some pot and feel good!

[lumberjack_jeff]

14. It's a byproduct of being bombarded with sociopathic media...

... combined with being turned into a bunch of scaredy-cats by politicians who see manipulating fear as a useful tool to winning elections. Kind of schizophrenic - the kids who aren't convinced to turn into "gangstas" grow up only to be manipulated into impotent fear.

It's interesting that it would happen here. The United States was formed by people who, whatever their faults, were the very definition of courageous, and who lived by a strong moral code as evidenced by the constitutional laws that are their legacy.

[High Plains]

17. Thank you.

We are indeed a nation of scaredy cats. And we lap up our daily dose of fear and loathing. Even works at DU.

[High Plains]

18. One problem is the criminalization of damn near every social problem.

Six-year-old kisses a girl in school? Arrest and charge him.

Somebody uses a substance you don't like? Arrest and charge him.

18-year-old has sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend? Arrest and charge him.

I think this quick resort to the criminal justice system indicates a severe failure of imagination in our society.

[Turbineguy]

16. The obvious next big money maker

will be the funeral industry. But they will have to start controlling costs and improving efficiencies and provide lower cost services.

[malaise]

20. Why does it stun anyone

No plantations? Build prisons and find new laws to lock up black men.