We're #1!

Written by: DFA Staff on Apr 23, 2008 3:45 PM EDT

Not in literacy,  not in standard of living, not in life expectancy, but in throwing people into jail.  The United States has more people in prison than any other country on the planet.  The New York Times reports:

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

Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Danny
Communications Director

Tags: