Profound observation of the day
May 15, 2008 by E. Cartman
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/prison-nation.html
… Building and managing prisons, and locking people up, have become major facets of government power in our time, and it is long past time for those who love liberty to start to care.
Before we get to the reasons why, look at the facts as reported by the New York Times. The U.S. leads the world in prisoner production. There are 2.3 million people behind bars. China, with four times as many people, has 1.6 million in prison. In terms of population, the US has 751 people in prison for every 100,000, while the closest competitor in this regard is Russia with 627. I’m struck by this figure: 531 in Cuba. The median global rate is 125. …
Yes, we have laws and actually enforce them.
I guess it begs a couple of questions…, Can you have too many people in prison? What does that make the United States, if Cuba’s incarceration rate makes it a “gulag state”?
It all depends on WHY the people are in prison. Some countries imprison dissidents; we don’t. Some countries police and judiciary are easily bribed; ours aren’t - by comparison.
One also has to look at the relative sentences for the same crimes. That dramatically effects the overall percentages. This last is neither defense nor indictment. It’s just a mathematic fact.