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There are over 2 MILLION prisoners in the US prison population of a population of 330M. This gives the USA the highest incarceration rate of any country in the

• wizofaus 4y ago
  Not clear how that's relevant to the comment you were replying to, unless you're suggesting that being jailed for minor controlled substance offenses is far more common in the US than the many other developed countries with similar laws?
  • eptcyka 4y ago
    It is far more common to be jailed in the US for minor controlled substances than in many other developed countries.
  • metadat 4y ago
    Correct. It's a statistic many people are not aware of. Additionally, if you look at the racial breakdown of who's incarcerated in the USA, it's disproportionately black relative to number of blacks per capita residing in the country. Blacks are incarcerated at 5x the rate of whites, and make up 40% of all incarcerated individuals. This is insane.
    • wizofaus 4y ago
      Sadly it's even worse in Australia, where it's closer to 10x the rate for indigenous vs non-indigenous. I'd be horrified to find out they were expected to pay for their time behind bars though.
      • culi 4y ago
        Also important to note that indigenous people in the US are also often disproportionately affect by these policies. Oftentimes at even higher rates than Black Americans
      • superchroma 4y ago
        Australian jails are run by serco, which doesn't inspire confidence
      • lostlogin 4y ago
        New Zealand does this. Our population is 15% Maori but 52% of prisoners are Maori. https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300304290/mori-youth-key-to-ending-high-mori-prison-population-rates https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300304290/mori-youth-ke...
        • dekervin 4y ago
          At what point do we start calling it a concentration camp system ? 60%? 80%?
          • DiggyJohnson 4y ago
            It depends on answers to questions like “are these groups actually committing a disproportionate amount of the crime?” And I wouldn’t rush to the notion that you need to be justified in using hyperbolic/metaphorical language before you can criticize the problem.
            • xg15 4y ago
              Why would black or indigenous people as a group commit more crimes?
              • AussieWog93 4y ago
                Is that a serious question? Why would kids growing up in a remote community with no work, surrounded by drug and alcohol abuse, in a culture that tolerates child sex abuse, whose brains are cooked from day one by FASD and inhalants _not_ commit more crime.
                • wizofaus 4y ago
                  There may be well elements within certain cultures that appear on the surface to tolerate child abuse to a degree that seems alarming, but it's a stretch to claim any culture as a whole does so (and at any rate, first nation peoples in Australia emphatically do not share a single culture).
    • hello390 4y ago
    • SoftTalker 4y ago
      Do blacks commit more crime, or are they only more likely to be incarcerated as a result?
      • metadat 4y ago
        There are systemic issues, prejudices, and discrimination that put dark skinned / people of color at a disadvantage at almost every point in the system. American society is rigged against these folks. Example from yesterday, a black pastor was arrested for watering his neighbors plants because he "looked suspicious": https://news.yahoo.com/black-alabama-pastor-says-wrongfully-135812549.html https://news.yahoo.com/black-alabama-pastor-says-wrongfully-...
        • illuminerdy 4y ago
          I have major problems with using stories like these to promote the idea that the police did something wrong. The police don't know who that man was, or why he was on property that didn't belong to him. They're not mind readers. If he had provided the identification (or at least his name/DOB) that they had asked for, then it probably would have become clear to them that he was telling the truth. But by REFUSING to give them any information that would prove his story true, he escalated a situation that could have been resolved without his arrest. People seem to forget that we ask police TO INVESTIGATE. Not just walk up, accept whatever story they are given and then drive away.
          • chadcatlett 4y ago
            > The police don't know who that man was, or why he was on property that didn't belong to him. They're not mind readers Exactly. They're aren't mind readers but they made a decision that he was commiting a crime or about to commit one. They escalated it, not him.
            • illuminerdy 4y ago
              > They're aren't mind readers but they made a decision that he was commiting a crime or about to commit one. They escalated it, not him. No, actually that's not what they decided. They decided that, before they just walk away from their SWORN DUTY to investigate without knowing who he was or whether he actually belonged at that property, they would actually do their jobs and find that out that information by doing a simple thing like asking him to identify himself. I know some people really don't like police officers, but, in the future, you should try to make sure that that dislike doesn't make you completely irrational.
    • ChrisLomont 4y ago
      If you're implying that blacks incarcerated at 5x the rate of population is evidence of racism, then is men being incarcerated at 10x their population rate evidence of sexism? Or is there other factors?
      • wizofaus 4y ago
        I'd say it is. As in, a significant part of the reason men are likely to commit more crimes than women is due to social expectations around how men should act vs how women should. But there's no denying significant biological differences play a part too. The problem with trying to discern whether biological differences play a part in explaining incarceration rates between different "races" is there's no reliable method for objectively determining someone's race.
  • mikebos 4y ago
    My guess would be that most developed countries see prison not as a revenge but as the start to learn to function in society. America's system is more or less all about revenge.
    • karmakurtisaani 4y ago
      That and, you know, profit.
      • kortilla 4y ago
        There isn’t enough profit there though for that to be the driving force. Prisons as an industry make far less than industries with little to no political sway for even trivial protectionist policies.
        • lostlogin 4y ago
          There doesn’t need to be much profit per prisoner when you have millions of prisoners and you are paid to have them, and can use their labour.
        • dgeiser13 4y ago
          I believe you are wrong about for-profit prisons. It is 100% the reason that the US has so many incarcerated. Any time you can get government to foot the bill for something cottage industries will spring up around it.
          • kortilla 4y ago
            > It is 100% the reason that the US has so many incarcerated. Any time you can get government to foot the bill for something cottage industries will spring up around it. That doesn’t make sense. Building a prison in itself doesn’t induce crime nor does it induce prison sentences. Judges and juries have no quotas to fill based on vacancy.
            • 4y ago
  • missedthecue 4y ago
    Only 4.5% of US inmates are in prison for drug possession. I do wonder what the rate is for other countries. Shocking that 55% of inmates are in for violent crimes such as murder, rape, and manslaughter. source: https://felonvoting.procon.org/incarcerated-felon-population-by-type-of-crime-committed/ https://felonvoting.procon.org/incarcerated-felon-population...
    • ok_dad 4y ago
      Source, please, that just seems incorrect. That would mean for 2mm prisoners there would be 1.1mm murderers, rapists, and manslaughterers. That seems like way too large a number to be realistic with the declining rate of murder, rape, and manslaughter.
      • selectodude 4y ago
        There are literally hundreds of crimes that are neither drug possession or “murder, rape, and manslaughter.”
      • dotancohen 4y ago
        Presumably murder, rape, and manslaughter carry longer sentence terms. If a rapist spends five times as long in prison compared to a drug offense, then there will be five times as many rapists behind bars if the quantity of the two crime's convictions are comparable.
        • ok_dad 4y ago
          I still don’t see any numbers here, so I will assume the OP comment was bull.
          • wizofaus 4y ago
            There's a link in the post prior to the one you replied to.
      • missedthecue 4y ago
  • grej 4y ago
    It’s relevant because part of the reason that number is so high is recidivism. And part of the reason recidivism is so high is because of policies like these, explicitly designed to make it that way.
• culi 4y ago
  25% of the world's prison population is in the US, a country that makes up 4.25% of the world's population Land of the free
  • echelon 4y ago
    I wonder what percentage are in jail for gun-related crimes. The easy availability of guns is one thing that distinguishes America from other advanced economies. Edit: I found a variety of sources that suggest 18% of state and 15% of federal prisoners. Nowhere near as high as I was expecting.
    • atdrummond 4y ago
      Many of those gun crimes are people who previously committed a crime and were thus barred from owning guns. It’s an easy way to keep people rotating back into the carceral system.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • MacsHeadroom 4y ago
      Hah, most US prisoners aren't even in prison for violent crimes.
    • culi 4y ago
      That's still quite high. But the real thing that contributes to the US' crazy high incarceration rates is we tend to have much longer sentences than other countries The US doesn't actually have that much higher crime rates than other countries otherwise though Another issue, like this article points out, is that once you're in even if you get out your life is pretty much ruined and you're much more likely to go back in
• pan69 4y ago
  I hate posting videos but this QI fragment goes over some of the numbers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHz2Hmq7soo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHz2Hmq7soo
• tiffanyh 4y ago
  > 2 MILLION prisoners Just note that this story is about Jails, not Prison. They are different.
• dillondoyle 4y ago
  Not to say we don't have a huge problem in our (in)justice system, but those stats seem to ignore genocide and war? Rough numbers reported a lot are 1mm uighurs, 1.6mm ukrainians through Russian 'filtration' camps (though most aren't held long term).