Prisoner Strikes

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(08-22-2018, 06:52 PM)Dill Wrote: Actually, Len, I was not holding up China as a "beacon of inspiration."  I was commenting on the outsized prison population in the U.S.

China "makes whole families vanish" because their authoritarian society embraces the death penalty.  I do not.  The U.S. does not have a larger prison population than China because they don't "murder all their smugglers, counterfeiters, rapists," etc.

The U.S. is the largest Western democracy, 4-5 times larger than the UK or France or Germany. But if we compare prison populations proportionally, the UK for example, with a population of  63,000,000, had about 80,000 in its prisons in 2014.  Texas alone, with a population of 28,000,000, less than half to total UK population, had 143,000 prisoners in 2016.  I could make comparisons between other states and countries as well, like Germany to Florida.

This difference in incarceration rates between the U.S. and other Western democracies does not arise because the other democracies "murder" down their prison populations to lower levels than the U.S. as you say China does.  So I'd like to suggest that there are other ways of reducing prison populations, starting with changes in law and education.

You live in the UK or France or Germany, and you might not ever need to own a car or drive. Between public transportation, walking, and cabs, you're pretty set. That alone eliminates a lot of the people in jail for driving without a license, driving with expired tags, DUIs, hit-and-runs, excessive speeding, unpaid parking tickets, etc. Meanwhile outside of a very few specific locations, a car is vital in the US. Even for teenagers. (US has 910 vehicles per 1,000 people... France 578, Germany 572, UK 519... numbers don't include motorcycles.)

Then you figure the age there is lower for drinking, so remove a decent amount of people in the US busted for underage drinking or possession by a minor.... there is no heroine epidemic over there. There was no meth problem there either. They don't seem to have massive amounts of drugs being smuggled in from China and Mexico/Central America. (Arresting people for weed sure doesn't help.)

Do UK/France/Germany have their version of the Mexican Cartels or African American gang violence? I legitimately have no idea.



Either way, there's a lot of things that add up that I just don't think those other countries have to deal with or worry about.