NEWS: USA is #1...in Prison Population

CULTURE: USA is #1...in Prison Population

New Justice Department statistics indicate that the number of people in prison in the United States has grown at the highest rate since 2000. That's right, the Land of the Free has more people in jail than any other country in the world with nearly 2.25 million behind bars. Communist China came in a distant second with only 1.5 million.

Experts say the increase is mostly attributed to tougher sentencing laws and drug-related offenses. About two-thirds of the country’s prisoners are in state or federal jails while the rest are doing time in the local pokey. Most of them are male, but an unprecedented rise in female prison populations is closing the gender gap.

With all the talk of the decline of America isn’t it good to know that the US is number one in something?

And these are just the prisons which are documented!
America #1!

USA! USA! USA!
This is a good thing right?

Some other disturbing other trends from the Bureau of Criminal Justice Statistics:

I laughed, but it's really not funny.

Ummm yeah... It's good to know that absolute idiots have the freedom of speech to say assenine bullshit. Go America! Otherwise, some fucking total toolbox, may be executed for his/her pathetic attempt to defame the govt. which affords him/her the very right to say stupid shit and point fingers... Just sayin'.

For example, not that this has happened, but... If you were a writer for a website and had no fucking clue as to what you were talking about. You could try to dig up some bullshit article and put a cool-guy spin on it, in order to appeal to your 18-25 demographic, cuz you get paid per article, and hardly anyone reads your shit anyway because it is absurd, and relay it as too-cool-for-school fact, in order to milk the public for a buck or two... But the real fact of the matter would be (in my hypothetical example, because I would never insult a member of this site, much less, the staff): that person would, in all likelihood, be a total friggin' loser, who could not identify that that United States is, quite possibly, the only remaining super power, which is capable of dealing with a continuously growing group of sociopathic criminals, whom have no regard for human life whatsoever. Much less the "so-called petty" crimes that take place and rob average humans of their dignity and security for the rest of their lives. The police can't solve the crimes because they're too frequent and law enforcement personnel are understaffed, so crimes squeak by. In the countries or Central/South America -- it's rare that a murder get's solved when there are 3 times the number of murders than in the US, and that's not per capita, that's overall... Some people have no fucking clue what it's like to live in the US and under her laws and protection... Some people should buy a fucking plane ticket and go check out some other places, neighboring the US, who aren't so fortunate to have a prison system who is "number one in something." That person, whoever it may be, would probably be shaking in his/her shit walking through the nicest neighborhoods in Central/South America, because that person has either never left the states or could be a total fucking jack-ass.

Cry me a river that we have a large prison population... Are you kidding me? We've a portion of the most violent criminals on earth and they are armed with better weapons than the police. Waaaaa. The justice system is unfair... Whatever. Don't be a criminal and (in all likelihood) you will never, ever be charged with a crime. It's that fucking simple.

my bad... double post... third-world internet...

As someone who has spent time in jail, let me tell you this: it accomplishes NOTHING positive. You sit there bored out of your mind contemplating revenge being kidnapped and placed in a cage. Or at least that's how it is for the massive number of imprisoned people who haven't done anything ethically wrong. I was jailed for speeding. Did I hurt anyone? Not even close. Did I even endanger anyone? Nope. I can potentially see locking someone up who is some sort of extremely violent criminal, but jail time for selling weed or speeding is just f-in retarded.

America doesn't really have any more criminals per capita than any other country in the world- we just imprison more innocent people than any other country in the world, dwarfing our nearest rivals. You have to realize, our courts are illegitimate kangaroo courts, put in place with a mere semblance, an appearance, of legitimacy, to pacify the ignorant, complacent masses while they threaten, coerce, pillage, and steal wildly from the populous.

Next time you go to court, play a little game: look at the people standing before the judge as real human beings- don't let the court dehumanize them. Then, calculate how much money the court steals from these people per hour as you sit there.(Remember, the definition of stealing is taking what doesn't belong to you... and nothing justly belongs to the court) In the last court I was in, they stole approximately $25,000 per day per judge, low balling it. With 4 judges, that's $100k/day. That's roughly $25 MILLION dollars a year stolen from the citizenry, and that's only ONE city's courts! Our court system is a joke.

That is disturbing. What are we going to do about the other 95%?

Ahu! Ahu! Ahu!

OMG. I was offended in that really hilariously funny way. Kudos to you sir.

Another statistic that isn't so funny. Black consume about 25% of all illegal drugs in this country but are 50% of those in prison for drug posession.

Just a teeny bit odd.

Aww, someone stole my Team America reference.

In any case, I find it mildly ridiculous that we have twice the number of people in prison as China, and less than half their population. And it's mostly for stupid shit, too. I had a friend who spent a little less than a month in prison. Why? Because he and some buddies moved around lawn ornaments. We're talking, on the same block.

Of course, then we have Paris Hilton who has probably come close to killing plenty of people with her drunk driving skills, and she spends the same amount of time in jail. Go figure, huh. Justice and all that. Yep.

As if it weren't enough that we have such a huge number of people in jail for nonviolent offenses (many of which arguably shouldn't be crimes at all), we also seem to have a prison culture that is way too tolerant of rape and abuse by guards and by other prisoners. :-/

You know what I'm increasingly thinking these days? The abuse at Abu Ghraib wasn't just a few dumb people, nor was it anything in particular to do with the current administration. It was just the way US prison culture works.

Nothing personal, but anyone who's nearly been killed by a speeding motorist won't agree with you. Speeding is more likely to kill someone than getting obliteratingly high on PCP, loading a gun, and wandering around in some crowded city. Hang out in a wheelchair shop someday -- most of those people were injured in car accidents.

But your point's taken; jail doesn't improve behavior or teach anyone to be remorseful about their crimes.

Why is having that many people in jail not a GOOD thing? The number should be comforting in that criminals are being punished and locked away... It's really about what percentage of people are in jail for bullshit reasons, and what exactly the reasons are. I know most would say drug charges, but where is the line? Selling drugs? Selling dangerous drugs? I'm curious, what crimes do you all think to be considered ridiculous to be punishible by jailtime? I'm not trying to make a point, I'm actually curious what people think...

I know, America is so horrible, there are actually consequences for bad behavior. What a shame that we hold people accountable for their actions.

And the prison system is one of the reasons marijuana will never be legalized...

I can't believe I'm even dignifying this filth with a response...

Just what was that example? What the hell were you even talking about?

Isn't that the whole problem?

Your mastery of sarcasm is astonishing. Truly.

This is horseshit, and you should know better. Anyone who believes this is just as deluded as you seem to be.

What are you still doing in such a scary place, then? Why haven't you turned tail and run back to the super-safe love-fest that you claim is the US and A?

You're right! They're called "politicians," and they're armed with an enormous, frightening, and deadly military!

You know, I was just thinking that...

Too bad they're holding the wrong crimes accountable...

America has twice the number of people incarcerated than china (if that is a true statistic) because we fucking enforce the law -- has nothing to do with population. We enforce the law. You fuck up; you pay the man. I've been arrested 3 times and every time, I may not have been guilty of what I was charged with, but I was fucking up. I was doing bad shit at a bad hour with bad people, and I payed the price. That's what fucking happens. In the end, things work themselves out, if you're not guilty, but for the most part -- we don't have death squads going around killing gang members... We don't have hundreds, let alone thousands (look at Mexico, more than 1000 unsolved murders this year and it's only June) of violent crimes going unsolved...

The number of prisoners in our justice system is NOT a consequence of injustice. It is the effect of policial adequancy... Contrary to the popular CRIMINAL belief, we don't arrest people innocent of crimes on a regular basis.

You should be. And you should be grateful....

Yawn. Could you be more stereotypical? This diatribe is worse than the blue collar schtick.

The ultimate tyranny in a society is not control by martial law. It is control by the psychological manipulation of consciousness, through which reality is defined so that those who exist within it do not even realize that they are in prison. They do not even realize that there is something outside of where they exist...

You have been controlled like sheep in a pen by those who THINK they own you - from the government to the World Management Team to those in space. You have been deprived of knowledge by frequency control...

You believe that you live in the land of the free and the home of the brave, yet you live in the most controlled experimental society on the planet. The tyranny that has been set up here is rather interesting, because it is a tyranny without walls. As a country and as a collective consciousness, the United States [as a whole, i.e., a critical mass consensus of informed citizens] still has not reached an awareness that something is not right. The environment of the United States is actually much more controlled than that of the former Soviet Union, where the control was obvious [cf. Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent].

Because everyone is so frightened of giving up THE SYSTEM in the United States, they are going to be FORCED to give it up. The system is corrupt, it does not work, it does not honor life, and it does not honor Earth. That is the bottom line. IF SOMETHING DOES NOT HONOR LIFE AND DOES NOT HONOR EARTH, IT IS GOING TO FALL - and it is going to fall BIG TIME.

CONSCIOUSNESS MUST CHANGE... There has been an overinvolvement in the material world and a complete lack of understanding of the nonphysical world that exists all around you, so there will be a reprioritizing of what comes first in life. PEOPLE WILL STAND UP, ONCE THEY HAVE LOST EVERYTHING, who had never thought of standing up when they owned everything. PEOPLE WILL AWAKEN TO THE INCREDIBLE POTENTIAL OF THEMSELVES.

In the next few years, a connectedness and communal cooperation will begin to run through this country so that you will stop separating yourselves with respect to political ideology. That separation was DESIGNED. Whenever a people are separated, and they focus on what they do not have in common or label themselves different from others, it is a perfect disguise to keep them from discovering what they do have in common. This separation keeps people from banding together and becoming very strong...

You are controlled and separated by issues that strike at the core of your emotions... The 'pro-life'/abortion issue has been PURPOSELY ORCHESTRATED in the United States by different factions within the government to create a lack of harmony. Divide and conquer, and you own the people... Whenever people oppose people, THOSE IN CONTROL benefit, even down to the issue over abortion...

Always look at an issue from the perspective of the Bigger Picture so that you have neutrality with it, for the picture gets bigger and bigger all the time.

The planet is headed for a major confrontation with 'certain entities'... FEAR AND CHAOS have predominated on this planet because these 'entities' have stirred them up; [fear and chaos are] what nourishes them... 'We' are simply pointing this out; 'we' are not here to promote fear. Fear is what [those in control] want you to feel. 'We' want you to understand that YOU CAN CHANGE ANYTHING YOU WANT TO CHANGE. This is going to be a game of numbers in the future, because you will work together to bring yourselves to a place of EMPOWERMENT.

You will see a lot of ANGER in this country, because many people will feel POWERLESS. Anger is one of the first emotions that will occur when people finally understand the MANIPULATION that has been going on and begin to get in touch with their feelings.

Modern technology is one of the biggest weapons of frequency control. You have been sold devices for 'entertainment' [read: CON-tain-ment] and 'convenience,' and they are all involved with frequency control... GET RID OF YOUR TELEVISION SETS. They are the primary tool used to manipulate your consciousness on a day-to-day basis...

As a matter of fact, if you really want to evolve, do not read your newspapers, do not listen to the radio, and do not watch television. If you are able to be MEDIA-FREE for periods of time, and you disengage yourself from the frequency of chaos and anxiety and stress and hustle-bustle and temptations of all kinds that you don't need, you begin to get clear. You begin to listen to what is going on inside of yourself and to live in the world and not necessarily be lost in it. YOU BECOME CLEAR...

- Barbara Marciniak, BRINGERS OF THE DAWN, Bear & Co, 1992 (pp. 87-96)

One of the main differences in the US is that we have the longest sentences in the world. I don't know if we necessarily convict more people so much as we keep them longer, hence the high numbers.

Although if you look at the records, (citations anyone?) the number of prisoners in the US has tripled or quadrupled since one thing: the war on drugs Roughly 2/3 of the prison population is in jail for drug-related offenses, be they possession or 'intent to sell' (which is based on the amount in possession -- not actual sales). Drug crimes are punished according to federal guidelines, which can't be altered at the discretion of a judge. And there's no mystery about what populations are the main targets of drug enforcement.

Compared to other places, we also have fewer alternatives to prison; we have little or no support system to help those who would opt for a new life after prison. The public's simply not very interested in psychiatric treatments, halfway houses, rehabilitation, etc. Popular opinion is that prisoners should have longer, harsher punishments, even though longer, harsher sentences haven't reduced recidivism or shown much success in the prevention of crime at all.

Think prison is effective? Our recidivism rates are also the worst in the world. Long sentences, if anything, increase crime rates. For instance, lots of prisoners seek protection from gangs on the inside. Gangs are unofficially tolerated, (aka 'monitored') by most prison systems, since it actually keeps some kind of order -- but this virtually guarantees that many ex-cons will have gang loyalties to repay on the outside, and for those with no other support systems, prison and gangs are their new way of life, if they weren't already.

Anyway, with all that said, there's no escaping the fact the US just has a huge amount of violent crime for a 'developed' country. Who knows why this is. Is it economic stratification? It is the legacy of institutionalized racism? Is it the lack of social welfare or decent education systems? Is it radio waves? High sugar cereals? Porn? I really don't know.