U.S.: Yaay, we’re No. 1!

Ooops, that would be for highest incarceration rate AND most total prisoners in the world

Here’s the ugly figures.

A U.S. Justice Department report released on November 30 showed that a record 7 million people — or one in every 32 American adults — were behind bars, on probation or on parole at the end of last year. Of the total, 2.2 million were in prison or jail.

Why?

In a quick phrase, the idiotic War on Drugs.

Drug arrests account for 30 percent of our prison, parole or probation population. All that happens in prison is most of them become more addicted and learn how to be better criminals.

I’ve done newspaper columns on this before. If we are indeed fighting a “War on Drugs,” it’s a Vietnam (or Iraq) and NOT a World War II. And, like Vietnam, or Iraq, part of the price has included folding, spindling and mutilating civil liberties here at home.

Just think of how shameful it is to have the world’s most total inmates.

China has a population four times ours, and is a one-party authoritarian government. And we STILL have more prisoners incarcerated.

According to the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College in London, more people are behind bars in the United States than in any other country. China ranks second with 1.5 million prisoners, followed by Russia with 870,000.

The U.S. incarceration rate of 737 per 100,000 people in the highest, followed by 611 in Russia and 547 for St. Kitts and Nevis. In contrast, the incarceration rates in many Western industrial nations range around 100 per 100,000 people.

Specifically, how ridiculous, shameful and ineffective is this?

“The United States has 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's incarcerated population. We rank first in the world in locking up our fellow citizens,” said Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports alternatives in the war on drugs.

“We now imprison more people for drug law violations than all of western Europe, with a much larger population, incarcerates for all offenses.”

I’m seriously considering, at least at my next newspaper position, not running non-felony drug arrests as part of police reports.