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70 million!? Isn't that like 20% of the whole population? 20% of the whole US population has a criminal record?! I might be out of line here, and I'm sorry if I
by mettamage 4y ago
70 million!? Isn't that like 20% of the whole population? 20% of the whole US population has a criminal record?! I might be out of line here, and I'm sorry if I am, but it almost sounds like the US wants to treat its own citizen as a criminal.
- Clubber 4y agoLast I checked, the US has the most people incarcerated in the entire world, both by per capita and total incarcerated population. The land of the free... Yup, still accurate: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarceration-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarcera...
- RBBronson123 4y agoWhile the US has approximately 5% of the world's population, it has more than 25% of the incarcerated population.
- missedthecue 4y agoLots of places around the world under-incarcerate their criminals, sadly. India has 70 rapes per day, and a conviction rate of just 30%. Sub-Saharan Africa is even worse.
- sph 4y agoIs that an attempt to justify the mind boggling incarceration rate in the US?
- missedthecue 4y agohmm not really. It's more pointing out a good reason for the global disparity. It's a simple statistical thought process... another example is that the US is also heavily overrepresented in the number of LGBT people, because many other countries, particularly high-population countries repress that. If you don't compare all-else being equal, you're going to have other factors playing into the resulting figure.
- Clubber 4y agoJust to how much the US is incarcerating, the difference between India's incarcerated the US incarcerated is 1,590,200. Assuming 70 rapes per day with 70% (49 per day) not convicted, it would take 32,453 days (approx 88 years) at 100% conviction rate to match the US's current incarceration rate.
- missedthecue 4y agoOf course, rapes aren't the only crime that goes unpunished in certain parts of the world. Half of my family is from the African country of Liberia. Google tells me their incarceration rate is 1/10th of the US. I don't know what to tell you if you think the crime rate there is 1/10 of the US.
- Clubber 4y ago>I don't know what to tell you if you think the crime rate there is 1/10 of the US. From what I understand it's not so much the amount of crime, but the duration of the punishment that causes the US problem. Most justice-involved people in the U.S. are not accused of serious crimes; more often, they are charged with misdemeanors or non-criminal violations. Yet even low-level offenses, like technical violations of probation and parole, can lead to incarceration and other serious consequences. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html
- jen20 4y agoI would be truly amazed if there weren't 70 rapes per day in some individual states, let alone the US at large. I'd also be surprised if there were only 70 per day in India. Where did you find this number?
- qorrect 4y agoFor-profit prisons.
- ntoskrnl 4y agoWar on drugs.
- krapp 4y agoAll of the above plus systemic racism and a cultural aversion to non-punitive solutions to issues like drug abuse and mental illness.
- nceqs3 4y agoFor-profit prisons are a tiny minority of prisons in the US.
- qorrect 4y ago8% of prisoners in for profit prisons ? 5.6 million people, that's not tiny.
- RBBronson123 4y agoNo ~8% of those incarcerated are in private prisons
- RBBronson123 4y agoYou're right. About 10%. They are a relatively small player.
- RBBronson123 4y ago70 million represents 1/3 of all adults in the US. And yes, they all have records.
- pc86 4y agoTo be fair, I have a record and I've never been convicted of any crime. Any police interaction beyond a speeding ticket, whether or not it involves charges, and whether or not you're convicted, will result in an official police record of the interaction (or the charges, if applicable). I was charged with a lot of counts of some nasty-sounding (non-violent, non-sexual, non-financial) stuff that was dropped almost immediately after I retained an attorney because it was completely bogus. I still have to explain it probably 25% of the time I have an employment background check done.
- cldellow 4y agoCanada also has a high number of people with criminal records -- about 10%. This number was shocking to me. I only looked it up last year when one of our politicians made a bunch of noise about criminals getting vaccinated before citizens. The UK number is ~16%. I think the bottom line is there are lots of folks with criminal records, it's not just the US.
- nos4A2 4y agoThis seems to be the number of Americans with a criminal record and not a criminal conviction (someone who was found to be innocent would also be included in this number). I can't seem to find the number of Americans with a conviction though.
- spoonjim 4y agoYou can get a misdemeanor for a lot of things. Public urination, drunk and disorderly conduct, soliciting a prostitute, etc.
- Kranar 4y agoSure it's technically true but an unpaid parking ticket counts as a criminal record. At any rate, of the 70 million people with a "criminal record", only 16 million have been to prison. That's still a high figure but it's not the insane "1 in 5 Americans are criminals!"
- RBBronson123 4y agoNo, Kranar-the 70 million does not include unpaid parking tickets, unless it escalates to a criminal case (which rarely happens). The explosion in these numbers occurred during our war on drugs in the 80's and 90's, along with "three strikes" laws. The 70 million number relates to the number of people who have, in their record, an event(s) that might stand in their way from a variety of opportunities, so they are, by definition, serious events.
- Kranar 4y agoFailure to pay a parking ticket by the due date or failure to appear in court to contest a traffic ticket can result in a bench warrant for your arrest which results in a criminal record. Also, in many jurisdictions if you do not appear for a petty misdemeanor traffic ticket, you can be found guilty for failure to appear which also results in a criminal record. No you will not go to prison over it but if you are subsequently pulled over, you can be arrested for your unpaid traffic ticket and held in jail until a court has a hearing on your case (and it goes without saying this will result in a criminal record).