thegreekdog wrote:Are there statistics showing the number of years, on average, someone is incarcerated in the various countries?
http://www.justicepolicy.org/uploads/justicepolicy/documents/sentencing.pdfhttp://famm.org/the-facts-with-sources/#4http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/us/23prison.html?_r=0I'm definitely no fan of Communist China, but Mr. Swickdick is right on this one.
China may be a more evil regime than the U.S. in several ways, but nobody beats the U.S. for the sheer size and scope of the incarceration industry. You can play with the definitions all you want, but the U.S. leads the way in incarceration rates, in racially-differentiated incarceration rates, in draconian sentences for relatively minor crimes, in the number of prison sentences handed out of victimless crimes, in "no parole" sentences for more serious crimes, and possibly most troubling, in the number of children tried as adults.
Numerous politicians have made a career out of promising to "get tough on crime" and the result is horrific. An ordinary, not-particularly-criminal youth can get involved in some normal youthful peccadillo, some low-grade vandalism or a street brawl or some drug use. In most countries, he would draw probation, possibly a fine to pay, some kind of restitution or community service. In the U.S., if he has bad luck with the prosecutor and the judge he draws, he can get a multi-year sentence during which he can be transformed from a normal, somewhat rebellious but perfectly normal and potentially productive youth, into a hardened criminal fully indoctrinated into the thug life.
The War on Drugs is the biggest factor. The narrow-minded fanaticism of anti-drug people leads to an average sentence of more than five years in prison for these essentially victimless crimes.
Prisons-for-profit is another factor. While in most countries prisons are a deadweight cost, in the U.S. many prisons have been converted into a profitable enterprise, either for the state itself or for some company which is counting on the growth of the prison system for its profit and will vigorously lobby for such growth.
There are 500,000 prison guards in the U.S., 800,000 cops, and something in the neighbourhood of 400,000 lawyers, law clerks, legal secretaries, etc., in the criminal justice system. (The last number is difficult to pin down reliably, because most law practises do not quantify how much of their work is criminal versus civil.) Add to that the construction companies that build the prisons, the companies that supply them with food and linens, the companies that supply the cops with their guns and the lawyers with their pencils, and possibly another million spin-off jobs are dependent on keeping a healthy flow of bodies coming through the prison gates. It is an industry, and a lot of people depend on the growth of that industry for their job security.
