Newt Gingrich must be proud. Because the "land of the free" now cages more people than any other country on the planet!
New High In U.S. Prison Numbers
More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year and the federal government $5 billion more, according to a report released yesterday.
With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second, according to a study by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.
The growth in prison population is largely because of tougher state and federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Minorities have been particularly affected: One in nine black men ages 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women ages 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 for white women in the same age group.
Five states -- Vermont, Michigan, Oregon, Connecticut and Delaware -- now spend as much as or more on corrections as on higher education. Locally, Maryland is near the top, spending 74 cents on corrections for every dollar it spends on higher education. Virginia spends 60 cents on the dollar.
Sing it with me now ... Freedom!
As a kid growing up, I was taught that only those scary communist countries, like the old U.S.S.R., locked everyone up. Especially concerning victimless crimes. Today however, it's America who locks everyone up. So much for the idea that we "won" the Cold War, huh?
America looks more and more like the old communist U.S.S.R. by the day.
See also:
I would add the caveat that China is known to use slave labor in lieu of officially jailing people. I know of a Sunday School teacher working in an illegal church who is forcibly working in a cigarette lighter factory 18 hours a day. They call it "reform through labor" according to American University Law school:
The PRC uses Laojiao to detain individuals it feels are a threat to national security or it considers unproductive. Individuals in Laojiao may be detained for up to three years. Because those in Laojiao have not committed crimes under PRC law, they are referred to as "personnel" rather than prisoners and they are not entitled to judicial procedure. Instead, individuals are sent to the Laojiao following administrative sentences dispensed by local public security forces. This vague detainment policy allows the PRC to avoid allegations that the individual's arrest was politically motivated and to assert that they were arrested for reasons such as "not engaging in honest pursuits" or "being able-bodied but refusing to work."
Perhaps our day is coming...
[...] The Classic Liberal: We’re Number One! [...]
Hmmmm,
The U.S. population is some odd 310 million and 2.3 million are incarcerated, of which, roughly 28% of the incarcerated are illegal aliens, so that brings down actual U.S. Citizens incarcerated to 1,656,000 or, 0.53% of U.S. Citizens.
99.47% of America walks freely.
Oh, yes! America most certainly has become the great gulag of the former Soviet Union.
Drama much?