11 ms·
25% of the world population in jail is American. 737 out of 100.000 Americans are in jail, that's almost one out of a hundred. As a comparison Denmark has 59 ou
by mixmax 16y ago
25% of the world population in jail is American. 737 out of 100.000 Americans are in jail, that's almost one out of a hundred. As a comparison Denmark has 59 out of 100.000 people in jail. And the number of Americans in jail has been rising steadily for the last 20 years.
This is a pretty serious problem.
- smokinn 16y agoThis clip from the british TV show IQ goes into those kinds of numbers. It's staggering. Especially for black men. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E7wgFcCefE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E7wgFcCefE
- qq66 16y agoThat 25% number seems pretty hard to believe, given that compared to all countries (not developed countries) America is very low-crime and America is 5% of the world's population. I suspect that either a) poorer countries are too cash-strapped to lock up dangerous criminals or b) that many poorer countries don't have reliable data on prisoner numbers.
- _delirium 16y agoAnother possibility is that America is jailing a lot of people who are not really "dangerous criminals".
- bad_user 16y agoYou forgot (c) law enforcement gone mad in the US.
- qq66 16y agoI didn't forget it, I don't think that that can be a 50x effect.
- rhizome 16y agoYou also can't be sure it's a zero-effect.
- bad_user 16y agoYeah, but you seem to be under the impression that the other countries have fewer inmates because they are poor? Really? How about Germany which has 95 inmates out of 100.000 people? [1] [1] http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/icps/downloads/world-prison-pop-seventh.pdf http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/icps/downloads/worl...
- mixmax 16y ago"The United States' incarceration rate is, according to official reports, the highest in the world, at 737 persons imprisoned per 100,000 (as of 2005).[7] A report released in 2008 indicates that in the United States more than 1 in 100 adults is now confined in an American jail or prison.[8] The United States has 4% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population.[9]" Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration
- snippyhollow 16y agoJust to be exact, wikipedia is not the "source". Click on the [7] and you'll get the source: Paige M. Harrison and Allen J. Beck, Ph.D. (November 2006). "Prisoners in 2005" (PDF). U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics. pp. 13.
- mixmax 16y agoYou're, of course, as correct as I'm lazy...
- Confusion 16y agoThe '25%' number is a red herring and not worth debating. The US has over 6 times the number of inmates (per capita) as the average Western European country[1][2]. How could that be, other than because of a seriously fubared justice system? [1] http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-pris... [2] http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r234.pdf http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r234.pdf
- philwelch 16y agoIt could be because of higher crime than the average Western European country. Imprisonment is a lagging indicator, of course, so the US crime rate would have to have been higher than the average Western European crime rate 10, 20, 30 years ago, rather than today necessarily.
- Confusion 16y agoWell, for instance[1] shows that the violent crime rate has been 2.5 to 3.5 times as large as in Canada between 1980 and 2000. That still leaves a factor of 2 to be explained. The other statistics in this report only makes the difference in incarceration rate harder to explain. The most common explanation I have heard is that in the US, people that are accused are both prosecuted and convicted more often. It seems extremely doubtful that the US police force and justice system could be twice as effective as that of other Western European countries. [1]http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collection-R/Statcan/85-002.../0110185-002-XIE.pdf http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collection-R/Statcan/85-002.../01...
- philwelch 16y agoI'm more than willing to let that factor of 2 come down to a fubared justice system--or possibly to longer prison sentences, which is possibly a "works as designed" type of bug. Big complex problems have big and complex sets of causes. Higher actual crime is not an outlandish partial cause of a higher prison population, even if it isn't a complete explanation.
- 16y ago
- zeemonkee 16y agoOr a pretty serious opportunity, if you get to build/run prisons for a living. Given how corrupt US politics is, I'm sure the two are connected.
- Alex3917 16y ago"Given how corrupt US politics is, I'm sure the two are connected." Prisons get to extend the sentences of inmates if they test positive for drugs while in prison. Guess whether it's public or private prisons where inmates are on average 8 times more likely to test positive for drug use. http://www.bop.gov/news/research_projects/published_reports/pub_vs_priv/oreprres_note.pdf http://www.bop.gov/news/research_projects/published_reports/...
- rhizome 16y agoThere's perverse incentive for them to allow drugs into their prisons if they benefit when inmates fail drug tests.
- rb2k_ 16y agoThe interesting thing is that for a lot of crimes, prison is ment as a time for rehabilitation. If the people that run the prison only make money if you come back again (or stay there), the situation changes slightly...
- JonnieCache 16y agoAnd a massive cash cow if you're selling the products of the cheap labour that goes on in US prisons. http://www.cio.com/article/595304/Prison_Labor_Outsourcing_s_Best_Kept_Secret_ http://www.cio.com/article/595304/Prison_Labor_Outsourcing_s... http://newworkerfeatures.blogspot.com/2010/02/us-prison-labour-return-to-slavery.html http://newworkerfeatures.blogspot.com/2010/02/us-prison-labo... Paying someone who you have in complete physical bondage under $1 an hour is slave labour as far as I'm concerned, even if it is nominally voluntary. At best its unconscionably exploitative. Add to that the fact that the US govt. is legally bound to prefer prison labour over any other for the production of body armour, weapons etc. for the security agencies. EDIT: Here's another fun stat: america has more black people in prison than in college: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2223709.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2223709.stm Although we in the UK are definitely doing pretty well at emulating uncle sam: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/06/uk_prisons_in_the_uk/html/1.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/06/uk_prisons_...
- philwelch 16y agoAnd yet, somehow, over the last 20 years the crime rate in the US has dropped tremendously. Every single one of those prisoners was convicted of some crime or another by a comparatively just court system. The underlying problem--criminality in some American cultures--is difficult and rather unique to the United States. Other rich countries are more culturally homogenous and hence suffer less criminality, though that's changing if you look, for instance, at Scandinavia, where the rate of rapes has risen dramatically as more and more Muslims immigrate there.
- joelmichael 16y agoYou got downvoted because people disagreed with you, not because you didn't elegantly state a perfectly valid perspective.
- jellicle 16y agoHis perspective isn't valid. "The court system" actually consists of many parts: --the legislature who chose to make particular laws --the police who chose to enforce particular laws --the prosecutors who chose to pursue particular cases --the courts who adjudicated the final case Every one of those four groups is biased against particular groups in the U.S.A. Arguing that the courts alone are "comparatively just" is not only false (race is a notable bias in the courts themselves), it neglects all the other factors that are also biased.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- philwelch 16y agoYou're not telling the whole story though--of course incarceration rates are going to go up when crime goes up (though it's a lagging indicator), but the crime rate has been declining since the 1990's--or "over the last 20 years", as I put it. (2010-1990=20). Simply pointing out that crime rates haven't declined below 1965 levels yet misframes the entire issue.
- xenophanes 16y agoStupid war on drugs :(
- jules 16y agoThat's merely a symptom, not a cause. The cause is that US prisons are for profit organisations, and that laws are written by lobbyists and passed by bribes. This shows how effective market forces are.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- forensic 16y agothey should get paid for every prisoner they rehabilitate instead of incarcerate
- derefr 16y agoIsn't that a bit like using "bugs fixed" as a metric of programmer quality? It gives them an incentive to get lots of people in for nothing, do nothing, and then call them "rehabilitated."
- SapphireSun 16y agoSo start paying based on prisoners who get decent jobs, don't commit crimes, or go back to school or something.
- forensic 16y agoobviously the metric for "rehabilitated" needs to be judged by someone other than the prisons
- rhizome 16y agoSure, but stopping the drug war would shut down a vector for incarceration.
- 16y ago