Inmate Count In U.S. 'Dwarfs' Other Nations

reply to post by greeneyedleo


Oh, you make it sound so simple greeneyedleo. It is, but not the same old lock em up status quo - that's clearly not working.

Obviously that statistic tells us something is Wrong in America.

I suggest it is not the simple they don't want to follow the rules lalala approach that you take.

You seem to take the same approach of those who work in corrections, who's only care is keeping the business of housing criminals going rather than trying to figure out what we're doing wrong and attempting to solve the problem. Does your name mean your a green eyed law enforcement officer, I wonder? If so, one who's given in to the status quo - I see.

The idea of continuing to put people down for failure only multiply's the problem, we need to pick people up show them the right way without scaring them for life as the result of their first failures.

There seems to be this hidden jealously that exists in America that somehow they don't deserve to ever be considered as normal again somehow. I suggest if we don't accept them as equals again then they will never contribute equally amongst us and will forever be a burden on society.

I suggest it is a combination of things that has led to our failures as a society and the high prison population is a result.

Lack of family's at home to teach them what's right & how important education is. Number one problem.

Mostly its about education - the average tested grade level of those locked up is 8th grade. That means that many of them are 6th grade etc. They have not been taught properly how to make a living or how to behave, because there are so many have been raised by gangs instead of parents of a normal law abiding family.

Many of them have decent IQ's they just don't know what steps to take to make a good life without crime. Thus they can't compete in the normal work force at the level they could - otherwise better educated. If nobody shows they the right way they continue the wrong way - until eventually they're a lost cause or broken and unfixable.

Many of them are also mentally ill and we house them in prisons where they don't receive proper medical attention, thus they become lifelong revolving door criminals themselves.

The prison staffs are so undereducated themselves that they don't even know how to deal with them, and often enough the staff's behavior is criminal itself, so we end up with the lowest common denominator back out the door and the cycle continues.

Education, family, medical help, decriminalization of vice and better educated corrections staff.


[edit on 23-4-2008 by verylowfrequency]

We also hold the honor of leading the world in jailing children for life.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I think the war on drugs is hugely responsible for this. We are trying to dictate perceived morality on the masses. That combined with the fact that our prison system makes many people very wealthy and it is a perfect storm for keeping the prisons packed.

Ah the American prison system. I've experience with it as my sister was inprisioned for two years for being a drug addict. She served time, hard time with murderers and other REAL criminals. There was NO treatment offered and when she was released to the custody of the INS for deportation back to Switzerland she was stll a drug addict, still sick.

Once in Switzerland, her illness once again reared its ugly head. However, in Switzerland, drug addiciton is treated like the disease that is. After an extensive stay in the hospital, and two years in drug rehab ( Fully funded by the Swiss government - clearly cheaper then incarceration ) she has now been drug free for two years.

The problem in the US is that prisons are filled with sick people. Now that private companies have taken over the running of many prisons their lobbies will fight tooth and nail to keep up the status quo.

The USA is "No. 1" in nothing but weaponry, consumer spending, debt, and delusion...and now in the number of prisoners...go you!

Maybe these other countries have less prisoners because the punishment is much more severe than in the U.S. The Constitution and the Bill Of Rights mean something in the United States and instead of cutting their heads off or their hands they get a lawyer and go through due process. I say stop doing the crime and you won't do the time. I also say that some criminals don't deserve rights after they molest a child or murder, but that's my opinion.

reply to post by Solarskye


Wrong. America is one of the few countries that still has the death penalty - right along with Iran and other hell holes.

Criminals deserve punishment, I agree. When someone you love is classified a "criminal" you might change your mind, though.

I love reading anti-American propaganda and then everyone just doesn't understand it because they are blinded by their lust for some political or other irrational reason just to "hate" America.

The raw numbers speak for themselves. There is less than 1% of the total population of the USA in jail.

The article, if anyone else bothered to read it, specifically states it doesn't count all of China's criminals. The author is wrong in his assessment that being politically active in China is not against the law, unless it is for the communist party, it is illegal. The author is making a different political point, this time, anti-communistic in nature.

You can't believe any number from Russia, this is a hold over of their cold war years and hidden police state system. Simplistic view but very, very true.

This being said, placing the USA third isn't necessarily a good thing. It does put us in the proper perspective.

As for the rest of the civilized world and criminals in jail. The USA is not as corrupt in the legal system as many other countries. The average person can buy their way out of jail in many countries by bribing the regular parties as well as guards and wardens. You can only bribe judges and jurors in the US system.

Our American justice system has harsher penalties in that it is illegal to stone people to death for religious reasons. You just can't kill a girl who doesn't have a large enough dowry. Drug abuse in general or the selling of drugs is not a recreational activity but illegal in the USA. Child abuse and kiddie sex, while a profitable tourism experience in some regions, is really frowned upon in the USA.

I'll state the obvious, it's just harder to be a legal American than any other nationality in the civilized world. It's just that simple.

reply to post by Solarskye


Are you for real. your constitution and bill of rights have not existed since early september 11. and you know it. patriot. act. guantanamo. abu ghraib. More laws, more prisons. less rights.

Let's not forget the climbing dropout rate in the U.S.

Many kids realize that with a college education costing upwards of $50K, and more and more jobs requiring degrees when they didn't before (I had a customer service call center job paying $8.50/hr back in 1996 with a high school diploma, a decent sum for my area at the time--now the same job requires a Bachelor's degree [?!?!?] and pays just around $20K, which is barely enough to survive on, let alone pay off student loans)--their chances of getting and holding a legitimate, good-paying job are practically nil.

We're one of a handful of industrialized nations that require students to go into tens of thousands of dollars' worth of debt for a higher education. Most of the civilized world has realized that college needs to be publicly-funded and essentially free to any who qualify for admission. Higher percentage of people with higher educations=more people with good-paying jobs and less debt=fewer people in prison.

When a kid sees the cost of college, and knows only the top 2% of his class will get any kind of real assistance in the form of grants and scholarships, and he's not in that top percentage--he knows he has 3 options. Drop out, and start working now, join the military and hope to survive long enough to collect on the GI Bill, or turn to a life of crime. When you can make $5K a week selling drugs as opposed to minimum wage flipping burgers, especially among cultures that idolize the criminal as a role model, the choice for many is pretty simple.

The fact that prison is a huge business in the U.S. also isn't helping. As a previous poster pointed out, the prison industry has a vested interest in maintaining and increasing the flow of prisoners through their gates.

And, of course, the drug issue. If marijuana alone were legalized the prison population would likely drop by a third. If, for harder drugs, treatment was the priority instead of punishment it would probably drop to less than half the current rate. Nine-tenths of the crime problem is determining exactly what constitutes criminal behaviour. The more you criminalize, the more criminals you will obviously have.

I'm not advocating going "soft" on people who molest kids or commit murder. I don't think anybody really is, and those who bring it up as if these crimes are somehow equal to minor drug offenses or addiction are only tossing out distractions to derail legitimate debate.

I love it when Yanks so boldly state that they are the best at everything...

Yet, they have little or no tolerance or understanding of drug abuse, yet quite happily pump their sons and daughters with anti-depressants, they worship guns, vote for idiots, lock up, shoot or tazer their own population and have little or no respect for anybody who isn't American.


The world existed a LONG time before you Yanks appeared on the scene.
Get over yourselves.

reply to post by DimensionalDetective


prisons are big business...and you don't screw around in this country with big business. the more prisoners you have, the bigger private contracts for business you have, to support the prison population. more laws, more prisoners, simple economics. and more taxpayer money for prisons, more taxpayer money for companies.

reply to post by greeneyedleo


Great points you make, greeneyedleo, and I can't believe we don't lock
up criminals more, either; like our leaders!

The lobby, where our lawmakers meet with corporations, and accept
money in exchange for favorable legislation, should be shut down, and
most of them LOCKED UP, for corruption!

Like psychopharmaceutical manufacturers; often times "help" for people
comes in the form of forcible committment to a mental hospital, and forced
medication! no thanks!

And one that gets MY goat, is insurance industry; Who in the world voted
for THIS law? I didn't! If I can't afford insurance, what makes our leaders
think I can afford the fine, for NOT having it?

Like you say, we are responsible for ourselves,,, so we don't need any
law dictating we be slaves to forced pharmacy and forced insurance!

reply to post by The Nighthawk


I hadn't even considered that aspect of social-economic situation of the American education culture as opposed to crime rate.

Very well stated and starred.

reply to post by Stumpy1


The US is not the most racially-diverse country in the world. Such a thing would be terribly hard to measure, and as far as I'm aware no-one has managed to do so.

And I have absolutely no idea how you equate multiculturalism with prison population - the two are completely different. Now if you had included "intrinsic social racism", you'd have made a pretty decent point.

Originally posted by greeneyedleo

Criminals need to stop being criminals. Dont break the law, dont serve the time! Being responsible members of society and take responsibility for your actions. Att the end of the day, its people making choices.

This is not about criminals (we have plenty that do need to go away) but these numbers are all about the war on drugs. We need to take away the black market and legalize drugs. This would take them off the streets and out of our children's hands. Children have access to drugs because they are illegal and the criminals have no problem selling them to our children. Make it a life prison sentance for selling to children and legalize it for adults. All drug related black market crime will go away, the children will not have access and the ones doing the drugs will do them whether they are legal or not. Just because a drug is legal does not mean more will take them. Would you take drugs if they were legal, with a proper education on drugs so you would fully understand what will happen to your life once you start?

750,000 people are in prison for drug possession alone. That is a social issue not a criminal issue.Our failed war on drugs is the reason for these numbers in what once was the greatest, most free nation on earth.

We cannot arrest our way out of a social issue. The drug war has to stop. The street gangs will disappear do to the lack of making huge profits trafficking drugs. The government knows all this but they want to keep them illegal because it makes so much money.

You can only help people who want to be helped. You can't force help on someone, I agree that there are a lot of people who don't deserve to be in jail but if you try to rehabilitate someone 50 times (from your example) and it doesn't work then there really is no other place for that person to be but in jail seeing as how they can not be a functioning or contributing member of society. And japan has a much less diverse amount of races living there, the people as a whole are not prone to diversity deviations so there would be a lower number of inmates because the japanese people as a whole would naturally and culturaly follow the rules of that society. If America was less diverse we would have less crowding in prisons. The percentage of mexican and black inmates as a combined ratio is larger than the white percentage.

Originally posted by LoneGunMan
This is not about criminals (we have plenty that do need to go away) but these numbers are all about the war on drugs. We need to take away the black market and legalize drugs. This would take them off the streets and out of our children's hands.

So, let me guess, you have no problem with some guy high on smack driving your kid to school???

Legalizing drugs isn't the answer. Better education about the effects of drugs might be.

Originally posted by mr-lizard
I love it when Yanks so boldly state that they are the best at everything...

Yet, they have little or no tolerance or understanding of drug abuse, yet quite happily pump their sons and daughters with anti-depressants, they worship guns, vote for idiots, lock up, shoot or tazer their own population and have little or no respect for anybody who isn't American.

The world existed a LONG time before you Yanks appeared on the scene.
Get over yourselves.

Yeah, the US is such a horrible place to live and their prisons are bad.

Wanna explain Long Kesh and the "H" blocks to the good people?

Originally posted by jerico65
So, let me guess, you have no problem with some guy high on smack driving your kid to school???

Again with the immediate jump to worst-case scenarios. Again the distraction.

Drug use can still be regulated by industry. If someone wants to be a school-bus driver it falls to the bus company to enforce drug-free rules through testing and internal disicpline.

Legalizing drugs isn't the answer. Better education about the effects of drugs might be.

Whose "education"? 99.9% of what I was taught in school about marijuana was absolute Bull#. Are you going to teach people the real science, or are you going to feed them propaganda?

Edit: I already know the answer to this question. If you taught the real scientific facts people would know how harmless many "drugs" really are, and would be less resistant to using them. But hey, you have to lie to the people to guarantee their "freedom", right?

[edit on 4/24/2008 by The Nighthawk]

reply to post by The Nighthawk


Why not the "worse case" scenario? You think it wouldn't happen?

What? Urine testing? You mean the violation of someone's personal lifestyle? Because that's the people will say if you're trying to keep guys with a little smack habit out of the bus driving industry. That's discrimination.

Pot probably isn't any worse than booze, but you're talking the legalization of all drugs. Crank, crack, acid, all that is also in the Pandoras Box of drugs.

Originally posted by jerico65

So, let me guess, you have no problem with some guy high on smack driving your kid to school???

Why would someone that does smack ever drive a school bus? Legalizing drugs does not mean you can be using drugs while at work. Alcohol is legal but it is highly illegal to drive while intoxicated. You listen to propaganda too much my friend. Did you know that the biggest contributer to "The Partnership of a Drug Free America" Are the companies that produce alcohol?

Prohibition creates drugs like Meth and people huffing spray paint. It is natural for people to want to experience an altered state of reality. Even children have this, its why they like to spin until they are dizzy.

As the person above me pointed out we need REAL education not propaganda. They classify marijuana in the same class as heroine. So what do you think happens when a youngster tries marijuana and finds it is very mild? The drug dealer tells them they lied to you about heroine just like they did marijuana. They then triple the profit by getting another youngster hooked on heroine. Use your brain please and not spew government propaganda please.