One per cent of Americans now in jail

Originally posted by Copernicus
Seems to be a large difference in mentality in Canada. They have a very low amount of murders and violence, and people seem to be unafraid of eachother.

I cannot speak for all of Canada, just my own experiences. Canada is not the paradise that some American liberals/leftoids believe it to be. In many ways, society up here is not too different from down there. Canada does lack the black underclass of the States, and has a more selective immigration process which favours the best and brightest immigrants rather than every bum claiming persecution. That in itself may explain the somewhat lesser amount of crime and violence.

OTOH, the US does a better job of defending property rights - not just of the ultra-rich but of the poor honest working stiffs victimized by criminals.

They have socialized health care I think, so everyone knows they will be OK if they get sick and so on.

Yes, we do have socialized health care here. IMO this one of the best features of Canada.

I think you have to build a society for everybody, not just the ones with money, otherwise you end up with violence from the "have nots".

To some extent. There is a difference between an honest "have not" and a vicious predatory criminal, or even a parasitic bum. Society has to reward honest effort, and have some sort of social safety net.

So I guess that means 99% of Americans are not in jail. Is the glass 1% empty or 99% full?

Well, considering we have a higher percentage of our population in prison than any society in history, I'd say "half empty" is understating the problem.

As I have pointed out already, this is being driven by an increase in the number of nonviolent offenders imprisoned. This has nothing to do with dealing with violent criminals. It has everything to do with bureaucrats looking for bigger budgets, and a powerful prison industry lobby that can put money in those politicians coffers.

Disgusting.

For minority groups the picture is especially bleak. One in every 36 Hispanic adults is currently behind bars, while the number for African American men is one in 15. More stunning is the rate of imprisonment for black men aged 20 to 34, where one out of every nine is now serving time.

Welcome to the Drug War... where non-whites are almost twice as likely to be incarcerated instead of receiving probation or parole.

A quarter of state inmates are drug offenders. Over half of all Federal inmates.

Violent crime is unfortunately out pacing drug imprisonments. In contrast with drug offenses however, these are fairly evenly spread across whites, blacks, and hispanics. (source)

According to this website Human Development Reports

The USA has 2,186,230 people in prison, USA total population, 303,545,326.

The closest country in prison population is China.

China has 1,548,498 people in prison, with a total population of 1,321,851,888.

The USA has about 500,000 more people in prison than China, even though China has a billion more people than the USA.

China has over 3 times the population of the USA and we still have about a 1/2 a million more people in jail than they do, no other country comes even close to these prison populations.

USA Population

China Population

[edit on 2/3/08 by Keyhole]

reply to post by Attari




I don't see how 1% can mean the land of the incarcerated. 1% isn't really that much people compared to the rest of the 99%.

Originally posted by RandomThought
reply to post by Attari

 

I don't see how 1% can mean the land of the incarcerated. 1% isn't really that much people compared to the rest of the 99%.

So what makes you think we can have 500,000 more people in prison than China, when they have about five times more population.

We outpaced Nazi Germany.

We outpaced the Russian Gulag.

We do this because of the War on Drugs.

Prohibition never works. It creates much moire crime that is violent.

Most of the violent crime would disappear if drugs were legal.

This is a social/medical/behavior problem and you cannot arrest your way out of it.

Putting people in prison for non violent crimes, such as drugs, doesnt help to keep that person from committing the offense again once theyre released. What we need is a coherent rehabilitation program to educate our non violent offenders. An educated people with without a doubt produce less crime.

I see a couple of reasons for this.

1. Powerful police departments are capable of catching a large portion of criminals, especially since pretty much every small town these days seems to have it's own SWAT team. While I'm not against the police having the tools they need to get things done (they need better vests for one thing), I think it would help if we also put in a bit more money into education so that we wouldn't need the police as much as we do.

2. Public education in this country is pretty miserable, especially in the city. As specified in our constitution, education is the responsibility of the states rather than the federal government. As a result there are many states that simply aren't living up to their responsibility, such as my homestate of Illinois. As it stands many of the state governments are having severe budget crisis and education tends to get the short end of the stick compared to pork projects. Illinois is especially bad in this regard as our government corruption makes the federal government look extremely honest.

While education in this country after high school is quite possibly the best in the world (17 out of 20 of the top universities!) it's not there for every one. College in the US is extremely expensive and it's only getting worse every year. Unfortunately the inner city public schools often make it difficult for students to go to a good college or get an academic scholarship that they could really use.

Granted, there's always the military option. However for the most part it is very difficult for criminals to get in, and rightfully so. There's also a zero tolerance policy for drugs, which I also happen to agree with. And while these policies are there for good reason it does make it hard to take advantage of a very good option if you already messed up during high school.

3. We're really shying away from the death penalty in most states. While this isn't an excuse for our higher crime rates and incarceration rates over the western world it does explain much of the difference between us and China.

4. Minor drug crimes can actually lead to more jail time than sexual assault. Talk about messed up.

5. People in the lower class often can't afford a lawyer and have to use one provided by the court. While these lawyers are admirable in what they do, many of the best are private practitioners who charge obscene amounts because they like the money. So you'll see a lot of upper class suburban yuppies getting off with an entire grocery list full of stuff while a lower class defendant usually cannot properly defend themselves in court.

6. There's in interesting correlation between cities that allow concealed carry of firearms having low crime rates versus those that don't. Take New York, Chicago, and Washington D.C. for example. All three of those cities actually ban ownership of handguns, but you still see criminals using them.

Originally posted by Keyhole
According to this website Human Development Reports

The USA has 2,186,230 people in prison, USA total population, 303,545,326.

The closest country in prison population is China.

China has 1,548,498 people in prison, with a total population of 1,321,851,888.

The USA has about 500,000 more people in prison than China, even though China has a billion more people than the USA.

China has over 3 times the population of the USA and we still have about a 1/2 a million more people in jail than they do, no other country comes even close to these prison populations.

The stat you fail to remember is China Executes around 1,000 to 3,500 inmates a year, and thats just the ones the government is willing to report and put on record. Some reports even out of The National Peoples Congress have reported close to 10,000 a year. So they DETER people from doing bad things. Their laws are FAR FAR FAR more harsh then ours. Their prison populace is mainly petty crimes and non-violent offenders, because as I said, In China...you get death before you sit and waste their money. We executed around 50 in 2007 according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

So to me it's pretty unfair to compare a country like China who is TRULY oppressive to their people, to the U.S..

reply to post by rcwj75


I was wondering how many people China executes and what differance it might make in the number of people incarcerated.

You would think with a BILLION more people in China than in the USA that they would have to have more people that should be in prison!

I just find it hard to believe that, with a billion more people, that there aren't more criminals in China than the USA!



[edit on 2/3/08 by Keyhole]

There probably are... but I imagine it's a bit more difficult to find them.
Especially considering people know they might get executed if caught.

The free public Education system K-12 is not designed to pump out independant, business oriented graduates. It has been desigbned to train kids to be servants to others, the ones that already have the money. It even inhibits free thniking in manu cases.

But frankly, the bigger problem is more of opportunity.

Originally posted by Keyhole
I was wondering how many people China executes and what differance it might make in the number of people incarcerated.

You would think with a BILLION more people in China than in the USA that they would have to have more people that should be in prison!

I just find it hard to believe that, with a billion more people, that there aren't more criminals in China than the USA!

I know it is hard to imagine when looking at numbers...but then just think about the type of country China is...and then it starts to make sence. These people are scared ----less to do anything wrong....and we now know why.

1% doesn't sound bad until you realize that's one in a hundred in prison. If people were treated for drug addiction rather than imprisoned for it that would reduce the prison population considerably. I'm not sure marijuana should be a criminal offense at all, but it's not legalized yet so you will still have people going to prison for smoking pot. That seems a waste of prison space.

We should re-think which non-violent offenders really need to be behind bars.

Originally posted by dbates
So I guess that means 99% of Americans are not in jail. Is the glass 1% empty or 99% full?

That's weird, I thought there was some rule against making one line posts. Admittedly, I'm not going to out of my way to find out if that is or is not true, but maybe our Super Moderators should be setting a better example with their posts.

And, then according to your... logic, what if 10% of the American population is in jail? Is the fact that 90% are still comfortable consuming their regular diet of fox news and dominoes pizza evidence that things really aren't all that bad.

How can we imprison more people than China when they have more than three times the population we do?

How can we imprison 25% of the world incarcerated population when we only contribute 5% to the overall world population?

And, how can you pose the fact that 99% not being imprisoned by the, often privatized, prison-industrial complex as evidence that things aren't all that bad.

That's some twisted optimism.

Now I'm no mathematics genius or anything but has anyone looked at the figures they provide, as it pertains to the title?

Let me see, they say in the article that there are "1.6 million people in prisons, translating into one in every 99.1 adults". It's nice how they qualify that, but still have an incorrect title. That would mean there are roughly a total of ~158.5 million adults in the US (18 and over). Yet according to the Census Bureau in 2006 adults made up 75.4 percent of the population, roughly translating into 225 million and some change. Point is, none of their figures add up, their 1% is BS. Not only are 1% of adults not in jail but the title states "Americans" which would imply every single US citizen is factored into the equation (regardless of age). That means 30 million Americans would have to be in jail or prison, which there are not.

Biased article, wrong "facts" and a sensational story with a glass foundation based on a very real attitude and need to portray the US in bad light.

The real figures dont even come close to one percent.

I really don't care what the numbers are. I care about stopping crime at the cause level, not punishment. Punishment is little deterrent to someone who smokes rock and packs a Glock. This is not about drugs laws, this is not about gun laws, this is not about education.

This is about meaningful opportunity. Give people jobs that pay a living wage. Plain and simple.

Originally posted by jackinthebox
I really don't care what the numbers are. I care about stopping crime at the cause level, not punishment. Punishment is little deterrent to someone who smokes rock and packs a Glock. This is not about drugs laws, this is not about gun laws, this is not about education.

This is about meaningful opportunity. Give people jobs that pay a living wage. Plain and simple.

Unfortunately, without beefing up the social system, I cannot see how that would be feasible.
Any opportunity the government gets to attempt just that, and the people seem to confuse a healthy social system, with being a socialist state.

Ignorance seems to run rampant without proper education eh?

I can think of a middle ground though. Bring back the work camps. Get the prisoners doing something productive, and get them used to doing it. Once released, those that would normally feel institutionalized would replace the desire to go back, with the desire to do some honest work.

Enough of a desire for work in a country breeds jobs.