Well kids, we have finally reached a milestone. One that no other country on earth has yet been able to achieve. Not even the most oppressive communist, fascist, Islamic fundementalist, totalitarian regimes have been able to keep up with the United States on this one. One percent of our population now lives behind bars.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/02/28/prison.population.ap/index.html
The steadily growing inmate population "is saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime," the report said. How did it come to this? Could it be that we are jailing an increasing number of offenders for relatively minor crimes, rather than keeping recidivist criminals behind those bars? Is our corrections system "emphasizing quantity over quality"? Seems like everyone goes, but no one stays... The same revolving door works for career criminals and first time offenders alike.
I've thought for a long time that we are not locking up the right people for long enough, all the while locking up a lot of relatively minor offenders too quickly. I wonder what percentage are behind bars for "victimless" crimes. I wonder what percentage are behind bars due to our decidedly Puritan (as compared to European countries) basis regarding "moral" laws. I wonder what percentage of the prison population is put their by our failed "war on Drugs"; I've seen numbers as high as 80% of the prison population. I wonder what we can do about all of this...