The brutal nature of punishment in the United States has been a common topic on this blog (see previous posts here, here and here). Along those lines, this Human Rights Watch press release reports that the United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other country:
Statistics released today by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), a branch of the US Department of Justice, show that at the end of 2006, more than 2.25 million persons were incarcerated in US prisons and jails, an all-time high. This number represents an incarceration rate of 751 per 100,000 US residents, the highest such rate in the world. By contrast, the United Kingdomís incarceration rate is 148 per 100,000 residents; the rate in Canada is 107; and in France it is 85. The US rate is also substantially higher than that of Libya (217 per 100,000), Iran (212), and China (119).
ìThese figures confirm an unenviable record: the United States is the worldís leading prison nation,î said David Fathi, director of the US program at Human Rights Watch. ìAmericans should ask why the US locks up so many more of its citizens than do Canada, Britain, and other democratic countries. The US is even ahead of governments like China that use prisons as a political tool.î
The US prison population has increased approximately 500 percent in the last 30 years, and continues to grow. The 2006 increase was the largest one-year jump in the last six years. The per capita incarceration rate has also increased steadily, from 684 per 100,000 residents in 2000 to 751 per 100,000 in 2006.
The new BJS figures also show sharp racial disparities in US incarceration rates, with black men incarcerated at a rate 6.2 times higher than white men. Nearly 8 percent of all black men ages 30 to 34 in the United States were incarcerated as sentenced prisoners at the end of 2006.
So, as we consider the chronically deficient and overcrowded nature of the Harris County Jail locally (see also here), do you think it’s about time that we begin to consider alternative criminal justice policies than simply throwing people in prison and throwing away the key?
Update: Sentencing expert Doug Berman provides more insight.
Tom – the reason there are so many people in American prisons is that we actually catch and prosecute people who commit crimes. Contributing to our incarceration rate is the fact that it’s no secret that America is the ONLY westerm country that actively pursues and prosecutes drug offenders while they are on our soil (as a part of the War on Drugs); and most of the folks in American prisons are there for drug-related offenses. The only other countries I can think of that take drug offenses as seriously as the US are those that settle the matter with a public execution. Hence, they have no drug-related prison population, and the prison population statistics remain more “humane” than ours.
If you think that the crime situation is worse here than in the UK, Canada, or France, I invite you to take a stroll on a street in London, Toronto, or Lyon late at night by yourself, and see if you get back to your hotel without incident. This can indeed be done in Manhattan without much of a cause for concern.
Don’t even get me started on how the Chinese settle their legal scores.