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Highest in the world, bar none

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Kwazy

I love this country.  I really, really do.  And although I am often ashamed of the actions of our leaders, I am proud to be an American. 

That said, today I came across something that deeply disturbed me.

-America has roughly 4% of the world population (OK, I already knew that)

-America has roughly 24% of world's incarcerated people.

This one hit me kind of hard.  One in four prisoners in the world is American.  We have the highest incarceration rate in the world (Russia is second) and highest total number of prisoners (China is second).

Think about that for a minute.  We have more total incarcerated citizens than China.  How is that even possible?  They have four times our population and throw people in jail for three years for blogging about Taiwanese independence?

What is wrong with me that I don't find this acceptable?

Comments (11)

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KingBayman·
Because a major percentage (last I heard I think it was around 80%), are in there for drug related offenses. I hate to sound like a dirty hippy, but if they made drugs a health care issue instead of a criminal issue, the numbers would balance things out tremendously.
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Kwazy·
I like to call it Prohibition, Take II
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RyanFromVegas·
I dont have any facts to back this up, but how many chinese people sit around waiting for another appeal and how many families get billed for a bullet?\r I dont think the chinese think of jail as a long term action..a couple years for minor stuff and quick bullet for serious stuff.
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dkhodz·
The problem is the eskimo lobby group. And the salt trade in Kazakhstan. Solve those two problems and the rest of our problems fall like dominoes.
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Big0ne·
I have no idea on this, but I wonder if incarceration isn't a primary means of dispensing justice in most other countries. Flogging people in Singapore might equate to 2 years in jail here. I'm not sure you're comparing apples to apples.
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KingDrewsky·
Everybody else kills their criminals. We like keeping them around and giving them free room and board.
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SamuraiCoder·
I tend to agree with KingDrewsky...death is the primary deterrent in many countries. Also, many countries don't have the same opportunity for crime that we do. Nobody's running around China stealing cars. There just aren't as many cars in China. There are also far fewer police officers per capita in many countries as compared with the US. More crimes go unreported, uninvestigated and unsolved. We have so many who need to steal and so many from whom to steal.\r \r The sad part is that there are so many who need to steal. We fix that and the prisons will start clearing out.
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Kwazy·
OK, don't take this the wrong way...but are you people real or just cartoon animals?\r \r Australia\r Canada\r UK\r France\r Spain\r Belguim\r Germany\r Luxembourg\r Italy\r Austria\r Sweden\r Finland\r Norway\r etc...\r etc...\r etc...\r \r None of these countries have a death penalty. America and Turkey NATO countries that do. And Japan is the only other first-world country which executes criminals.\r \r Yet we still have the highest incarceration rate.
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microscent·
It's gotta be the hormones in the beef.
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AutumnRocks·
Gotta be the beef!
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Armorsmith76·
A culture that minimizes personal responsability, espouses material goods as the definition for success and happiness...\r \r And the drug thing.\r \r Also, politicians have a long history of getting elected by vowing to, \"Clean up the streets and bring back the good old days when people left their doors unlocked at night.\"\r \r They do that by just locking more people up, instead of dealing with the root reasons for crime.\r \r