That is, if you count the number of citizens incarcerated. America only has five percent of the world's population but accounts for a quarter of all persons imprisoned. Americans face prison if convicted for relatively minor offenses like writing a bad check or possessing marijuana for personal use that rarely result in a prison sentence elsewhere. And they are kept in prison longer than in other countries. The median rate of incarceration among nations is 125 per 100,000 citizens, roughly one-sixth of the American rate. One in a hundred Americans is behind bars. The figures for minorities are significantly higher. One in thirty-six adult Hispanics and one in fifteen adult African-Americans are imprisoned. US crime rates have dropped in recent years, as a result of our proclivity to throw people in the bins for long stretches of time. Our prison gulag has been studied by Europeans and they have "came away impressed", but only in a negative way. “Far from serving as a model for the world, contemporary America is viewed with horror,” James Q. Whitman, a Yale specialist in comparative law wrote last year in Social Research. “We have a highly politicized criminal justice system.”
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
America is Still No. 1
That is, if you count the number of citizens incarcerated. America only has five percent of the world's population but accounts for a quarter of all persons imprisoned. Americans face prison if convicted for relatively minor offenses like writing a bad check or possessing marijuana for personal use that rarely result in a prison sentence elsewhere. And they are kept in prison longer than in other countries. The median rate of incarceration among nations is 125 per 100,000 citizens, roughly one-sixth of the American rate. One in a hundred Americans is behind bars. The figures for minorities are significantly higher. One in thirty-six adult Hispanics and one in fifteen adult African-Americans are imprisoned. US crime rates have dropped in recent years, as a result of our proclivity to throw people in the bins for long stretches of time. Our prison gulag has been studied by Europeans and they have "came away impressed", but only in a negative way. “Far from serving as a model for the world, contemporary America is viewed with horror,” James Q. Whitman, a Yale specialist in comparative law wrote last year in Social Research. “We have a highly politicized criminal justice system.”