Crime | October 28, 2007 | 4 comments

Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?

source: http://bostonreview.net/BR32.4/article_loury.php

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According to a 2005 report of the International Centre for Prison Studies in London, the United States?with five percent of the world?s population?houses 25 percent of the world?s inmates. Our incarceration rate (714 per 100,000 residents) is almost 40 percent greater than those of our nearest competitors (the Bahamas, Belarus, and Russia). Other industrial democracies, even those with significant crime problems of their own, are much less punitive: our incarceration rate is 6.2 times that of Canada, 7.8 times that of France, and 12.3 times that of Japan. We have a corrections sector that employs more Americans than the combined work forces of General Motors, Ford, and Wal-Mart, the three largest corporate employers in the country, and we are spending some $200 billion annually on law enforcement and corrections at all levels of government, a fourfold increase (in constant dollars) over the past quarter century.
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4 comments // Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?

  • Marilynn_Murray
    • 0
      Marilynn_Murray  

    • One of the main reasons our jails are overcrowded is that we jail people for marijuana sale and use. Stupid, stupid, stupid. We can't figure a way to tax it so we put people in jail for using it. I personally don't see that it is any worse than alcohol. I'm not a user although I have tried it years ago. Don't see the problem except that it's illegal. Does it make you feel safer to have a marijuana user in jail? If it does how about we jail boozers too then we would be really, really safe.

    • 4 years ago
  • eisnein
    • 0
      eisnein  

    • it is clearly a good business for those involved in profiteering from the incarceration of other human beings.

      my wife works as a therapist/counselor in the prison system and the two prison's i have visited both had nicer cafterias and equipment then my public school...

      also life after prison doesn't really exist.. at least not having full human rights, which creates a very high rate of recidivism as well. you can't vote? you have to put that you committed a felony on job applications (thereby pretty much guaranteeing you not to get the job)? drug dealers are put away long then rapists?

      this isn't to say that there arent people who should be in there- just that the (whole) system is clearly in need of a reworking.

    • 4 years ago
  • covelogibbs
  • joshuaheller
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