Prison populations in the USA

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

Regarding: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040206.html

This question comes up time and time again and without fail, the commentators manage to ellude much of the related facts and base their opinion on one single fact. However, it is imperative that an entire system be compared, not just one single fact in order to draw any conclusions.

Looking at prison populations alone ignores the fact much of the world has a completely different punishment system. In Malaysia, and a host of other countries, a thief is beaten into unconsciousness with canes, and turned over to his family, almost dead. In most countries, spousal abuse is not considered a crime and certainly not reported because women have no value there. In the USA, these are put in jail. In many countries, rape is either ignored or the perpetrator is killed by the family, bribery is expected, and drug dealers are summarily shot. China doesn’t believe in jail sentences for drug dealers. They kill them. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/englis...tent_342848.htm We put them in prison. If you are going to compare legal systems, you have to take a look at the whole thing.

Does that mean that we wish to compare ourselves to despot dictators? No, but then you cannot include the whole world in your comparison either. We are in fact higher in our prison population than European countries, Japan, and Australia. In this fact, there may well be issues, however there are also other differences that are contributing factors that also must be considered including by far the largest human population, the most culturally diverse population, the largest geography to police, and more borders than all of Europe. All factors must be considered.

Critics tend to use raw single facts as battering rams agains the USA. But I hardly see any point in a competition to see who can have the lowest prison population if it means putting citizens back on the street that don’t belong there. The question should be more about where the greatest justice is served, not who can deliver the fewest number of criminals to the prison system. On that, there is little more than unsupported opinion, no matter which view a person takes.

2

Well said. Given that, do you agree that The US prison situation is in many ways profoundly unjust? That the “Defenders of civil liberties” Cecil mentions have some good points?

3

OK, shardman, if we’re going to get comparing what is and isn’t legal places, consider that some 60% of federal prisoners and 20% of people in our state systems are there for drug offenses. Cite.

Presumably many of those people wouldn’t be imprisoned in other parts of the world in which categories of drug use have been decriminalized.

Otherwise, considering that a host of things are legal here which aren’t in large parts of the world, the fact that we’re kicking some serious butt in our rate of locking people up should be that much more alarming.

Finally, these figures from the late 1990s suggest that there are around 25,000 prisoners in Malay jails, some 29% of them awaiting trial. That’s fairly odd for a country that doesn’t try people and jail them, isn’t it? Are they being arrested for theft? Cite “Common offences were linked to illegal entry into the country and having no work permit. Thefts… was also high on the list.”

According to the same article, arrests have been rising with street crime. Can you cite the fact that theives are just beaten and returned to their families?