Everyone In America Is In Prison But You

Okay, we dropped the ball on this a little, but it bears mentioning that the New York Times did a story recently about how the United States has more people in jail than any other country in the world. High five!

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.

How do we do it? Put everybody in jail!

It has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. (If you count only adults, one in 100 Americans is locked up.)

The only other major industrialized nation that even comes close is Russia, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The others have much lower rates. England’s rate is 151; Germany’s is 88; and Japan’s is 63.

The median among all nations is about 125, roughly a sixth of the American rate.

But why so many prisoners? English!

“Although it is not at all clear what it is about Anglo-Saxon culture that makes predominantly English-speaking countries especially punitive, they are,” Mr. Tonry wrote last year in “Crime, Punishment and Politics in Comparative Perspective.”

Many specialists dismissed race as an important distinguishing factor in the American prison rate. It is true that blacks are much more likely to be imprisoned than other groups in the United States, but that is not a particularly distinctive phenomenon. Minorities in Canada, Britain and Australia are also disproportionately represented in those nation’s prisons, and the ratios are similar to or larger than those in the United States.

So, not only are American White people racist. All White people are? Also, here’s a thought: Who makes money building all those prisons?

Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’ [New York Times]