In the political arena one particular stat is again raising it's head for all to see and believe. Namely, the U.S.A. has more people in jail and prison than any other country in the world. Of course, one of the stats includes a racial percentage which immediately baits those who might be affected by that type of scrutiny. But first, before I get into political fishing in regard to the U.S. prison inmates, lets do a small study of our prison system in general in order to find out WHY we have so many prisoners as compared to the rest of the world. In the U.S., drug traffickers make up nearly 60% of our prison population. In many major countries (33) drug trafficking is a capital offense. Just as a small example: In China it's either hanging or a bullet to the back of the head, in most of the Middle East it is a hanging offense, and Putin has recently called for stiffer measures including capital punishment for those who would like to push drugs. With our system, drug dealers and other major law breakers (illegal aliens in particular) are being cut loose by our government because of the over population in our prisons. In the U.S. rape is treated with a jail sentence and at present there are over 200K convicted sexual offenders in our jail system. In some countries rape is treated somewhat differently including capital punishment, loss of body parts, public flogging, and a number of other very imaginative solutions not including a long stay in jail. Rape isn't treated as a "sickness," it's treated as a crime! Note: In no way am I advocating stiffer capital punishment laws but I am merely trying to equalize the playing field when it comes to other countries and our more "humane" way of treating crime. One other note though is that those countries practicing capital punishment do not give the prisoner a long stay on death row while making their appeals. Normally, if you do the crime, you die in a New York quickness. Along with making our prisons a veritable haven for wayward souls compared to nearly ANY other country and our compassionate capacity for forgiveness, most criminals treat our jail system as an inconvenience. Nearly 47% of convicted felons who are released in the U.S. go back to prison after being convicted of a different crime than the one they initially went in for. ( which doesn't say much for our rehabilitation techniques in our grey bar hotels.) One last stat I decided to include is a link to numbers of those on death row in regard to race and stay while waiting execution of sentence. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/execution-list-2015 Again, I am NOT advocating the death penalty nor giving any opinion in regard to it. But, the stats given by our politicians are skewed. They are saying that we have more prisoners than any other country but are not giving the actual reasons for that stat. We absolutely do have a more "user friendly" prison system than any other system in the world therefore instead of a direct deterrent it is regarded as a just another round in jail.
Yep, not much there I disagree with, other than I'm tired of housing and feeding them all. The prisons here in the U.S. are a breeding ground for gangs. It's their version of university, and they definitely learn a lot, despite paying no tuition. Imagine if we didn't have to pay to support all of the prisoners, their offspring on the outside, all of the law enforcement personnel, time and effort spent on drug interdiction, gang activity and other crime? Then there's the cost of war. The scale seems to have tipped out of our favor.