America’s Most Embarrassing Statistic
Posted: Thursday, October 20, 2011
by Terry Mitchell
http://commenterry.blogs.com
I heard a statistic the other day that made me sick at my stomach. The United States has more people in prison than any other country on the face of the earth. And this is in spite of the fact that the U.S. is just the third most populous nation, with only about a fourth of the population of China or India. This is our county, people. This is the good old USA, for gosh sakes! How can we justify lecturing China about anything? Don't get me wrong; this is not an attempt to bash America. Rather this is just to point out a condition in which we need a lot of improvement.
Prisons are breeding grounds for more hardened criminals, so sending someone to prison often results in that person being sent to prison again later, and possibly over and over again. The only solution is a more libertarian America, where people are free to do whatever they want as long as their actions do not directly and adversely affect the lives, welfare, or property of others. And we can begin by taking an eraser to all of those laws that serve only to vent our outrage, disgust, or pious indignation.
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Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)This country has more people incarcerated, per capita, than ANY evil, nefarious, repressive regime, in the world.
The truth, is that America, is a most repressive regime.
America leads all the repressive regimes in the world with more per capita inmates.
We have more people locked up than, Iran, Iraq, Cuba , North Korea, Russia, and China combined.
Never forget to tell silly Americans who beat drums about our 'freedoms' and liberties" they wrongly believe guaranteed us under our Constitution.
Japanese Americans had their businesses shut down, their homes virtually stolen and were interred, locked up behind barbed wire; this all happened to AMERICAN CITIZENS!
Rather than any "rights", which can be taken away from us in a moment, we have privileges.
America is perhaps one of the most repressive regimes in the world.Come on Paul, that story has been criticized and exaggerated far too much. I was here at the time. The country didn't do this to punish anyone, but we lost just about all the navy we had in that attack. We would have been sitting ducks if the Japanese had found out just how crippled we were. That is the reason such drastic steps were taken. There was no way of knowing just who might be a homeland sympathizer and would give them information. I had four brothers who were in that war. It was bad and it was long.Paul, with the exception of the topic I covered in my article, I think the U.S. compares quite favorably to all of the other countries of the world. I know I would not want to live anywhere else. Do you really think the U.S. is one of most repressive regimes in the world? Good grief! What kind of mind-altering drugs are you taking, man? Oh yeah, I forgot - you're the guy who does all of those articles about the space aliens who supposedly visited the earth thousands of years ago.
Terry, One of the subjects I teach regularly is Corrections in the US. The U.S has more prisoners locked up than any reporting country. Drug related convictions are reasons for much as is our countries get tough on crime mentality and also judge's fearing outrage for sentencing too leniently. Crime has been going down for many years now and some believe the get-tough policies have had a major role in its decline. I too believe we have way too many people locked up in the U.S. The most realistic way to drop it is by revamping our drug laws.
Great topic to bring to the forefront.Steve, thanks for reading and contributing your thoughful input.
I would stand with Mr. Kovacs. I think our drug laws skew the entire picture. Although it truly is something to be viewed and understood, that is a definite factor.Yes, Christofer, I think our drug laws have a lot to do with it.
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