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What is US incarceration rate is so high? I wouldn't get into the racial part but just the shear number and per ca pita rate is embarrassingly astonishing!
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The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world at 754 persons in prison or jail per 100,000 (as of 2008).[6] A report released Feb. 28, 2008 indicates that more than 1 in 100 adults in the United States are in prison.[24] The United States has less than 5% of the world's population[25] and 23.4% of the world's prison population.[4]
By comparison in 2006, the incarceration rate in England and Wales was 148 persons imprisoned per 100,000 residents; the rate for Norway was 66 inmates per 100,000 and the rate in New Zealand was 186 per 100,000.[4] In Australia in 2005, the rate was 126 prisoners per 100,000 residents.[4] In the Netherlands, the 2002 rate was 93 per 100,000 residents"
Maybe the US can afford to catch and incarcerate criminals.
Maybe the US has more personal freedoms which allow people to go over the line.
Maybe other countries are deterred from committing crimes against their brothers as other countries are more homogeneous.
We have too many stupid laws in states. Like the "three strikes" in CA.
We seriously need to redo the law/punishment system in this country.
Currently: Missed a parole meeting once? Stole a pair of shoes 3 times? Or a traffic violation (like speeding) on a parole? up to a year in federal prison. Smoked an ounce of weed? up to a year in prison.
Pretty much entirely due to the "Drug War," which serves the dual purposes of expanding government power while protecting the monopoly of Big Pharma and the doctors that hand out prescriptions.
Funny how the most dangerous and harmful drug, nicotine, is totally legal, even though "Each year, an estimated 443,000 people die prematurely from smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke, and another 8.6 million have a serious illness caused by smoking.." CDC - Chronic Disease - Tobacco - At A Glance
To put this into perspective, "Cocaine kills about 2,500; Heroin kills about 2,000; Aspirin kills about 2,000; There has never been a recorded death due to marijuana at any time in US history....All illegal drugs combined kill under 20,000 per year...Tobacco kills more people each year than all of the people killed by all of the illegal drugs in the last one hundred years." Drug Facts And Statistics
The War on Drugs came about when President Nixon decided to "increase presidential powers and galvanize support from conservatives for his presidency and re-election. He then created a series of anti-drug agencies – eventually folded into the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) -- that reported directly to the president, with little congressional supervision. With the creation of these federal agencies and the metaphor of “war”, the president transferred responsibility from state and local governments, where the emphasis was on treatment of illegal drug use within the framework of a community or health problem, to federal coordination that addressed treatment but also established special enforcement agencies directly under the presidential mandate." Foreign Policy In Focus | Militarizing Mexico: The New War on Drugs
Coincidentally, the drugs that are illegal are the ones that, coincidentally, form the entire economies of the inner-city ghettos. A primary result of the War on Drugs has been wholesale incarceration of huge numbers of poor African-Americans and Hispanics, who have no other economic opportunities and can hardly be blamed for self-medicating with drugs that are much less harmful than tobacco.
I would think the Liberals would be more vocal on the racist aspect of the War on Drugs, because it is incredibly racist to make laws that only criminalize the drugs typically taken by poor inner-city residents, while ignoring infinitely more harmful drugs because many white people use them.
Pretty much entirely due to the "Drug War," which serves the dual purposes of expanding government power while protecting the monopoly of Big Pharma and the doctors that hand out prescriptions.
Funny how the most dangerous and harmful drug, nicotine, is totally legal, even though "Each year, an estimated 443,000 people die prematurely from smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke, and another 8.6 million have a serious illness caused by smoking.." CDC - Chronic Disease - Tobacco - At A Glance
To put this into perspective, "Cocaine kills about 2,500; Heroin kills about 2,000; Aspirin kills about 2,000; There has never been a recorded death due to marijuana at any time in US history....All illegal drugs combined kill under 20,000 per year...Tobacco kills more people each year than all of the people killed by all of the illegal drugs in the last one hundred years." Drug Facts And Statistics
The War on Drugs came about when President Nixon decided to "increase presidential powers and galvanize support from conservatives for his presidency and re-election. He then created a series of anti-drug agencies – eventually folded into the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) -- that reported directly to the president, with little congressional supervision. With the creation of these federal agencies and the metaphor of “war”, the president transferred responsibility from state and local governments, where the emphasis was on treatment of illegal drug use within the framework of a community or health problem, to federal coordination that addressed treatment but also established special enforcement agencies directly under the presidential mandate." Foreign Policy In Focus | Militarizing Mexico: The New War on Drugs
Coincidentally, the drugs that are illegal are the ones that, coincidentally, form the entire economies of the inner-city ghettos. A primary result of the War on Drugs has been wholesale incarceration of huge numbers of poor African-Americans and Hispanics, who have no other economic opportunities and can hardly be blamed for self-medicating with drugs that are much less harmful than tobacco.
I would think the Liberals would be more vocal on the racist aspect of the War on Drugs, because it is incredibly racist to make laws that only criminalize the drugs typically taken by poor inner-city residents, while ignoring infinitely more harmful drugs because many white people use them.
Your stats may be true, (or they might not) but it misses the point. When was the last time you heard of people getting stabbed, shot, or beat to death over a pack of cigaretts? Does tobacco make people go crazy and violent? I am no fan of smoking, but cocaine & heroin are dangerous. I think we need to get more serious in the war on drugs. We could put an end to 90% of the drug problem in 2 years if we got serious. Instead, we go half-As$ and it doesn't work.
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