...Americans did not commit crimes at any higher rate than previously
I didn't see where you provided proof of this.
Are you trying to say we are better at identifying and punishing crime? That tougher sentencing has led to declining crime rates? That most of the people in prison are really innocent and it's all a big government conspiracy? That we should choose from a rotating selection of relatively small and homogeneous European countries and only imprison exactly as many people as that country does at any given time regardless of crimes committed here? Would we have more *insert weeping and dramatic soundtrack here* freedom and liberty if most of the people in prison today for whatever reason were summarily released by big man obama via royal decree? You need to support your claim and clarify your conclusions.
"Relatively small and homogeneous European countries"??? 'Evil empires like China and Russia are more lenient on their citizenry that the United States of America..."the city upon the hill"
2009
Can Our Shameful Prisons Be Reformed?
David Cole
Georgetown University Law Center,
cole@law.georgetown.edu
With approximately 2.3 million people in prison or jail, the United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world—by far. Our per capita rate is six times greater than Canada’s, eight times greater than France’s, and twelve times greater than Japan’s. Here, at least, we are an undisputed world leader; we have a 40 percent lead on
our closest competitors—Russia and Belarus.
Until 1975, the United StatesÂ’ criminal justice system was roughly in line with much of EuropeÂ’s. For fifty years preceding 1975, the US incarceration rate consistently hovered around 100 inmates per 100,000; criminologists made careers out of theorizing that the incarceration rate would never change. Around 1975, however, they were proved wrong, as the United States became radically more punitive. In thirty-five years, the incarceration rate ballooned to over 700 per 100,000, far outstripping all other countries.
This growth is not attributable to increased offending rates, but to increased punitiveness. Being “tough on crime” became a political mandate. State and federal legislatures imposed mandatory minimum sentences; abolished or radically restricted parole; and adopted “three strikes” laws that exact life imprisonment for a third offense, even when the offense is as minor as stealing a slice of pizza. Comparing the ratio of convictions to “index crimes” such as murder, rape, and burglary 3 between 1975 and 1999 reveals that, holding crime constant, the United States became five times more punitive. Harvard sociologist Bruce Western estimates that the increase in incarceration rates since 1975 can take credit for only about 10 percent of the drop in crime over the same period.
Much of the extraordinary growth in the prison and jail population is attributable to a dramatic increase in prosecution and imprisonment for drug offenses. 5 President Reagan declared a “war on drugs” in 1982, and the states eagerly followed suit. From 1980 to 1997, Loury tells us, the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses increased by 1,100 percent. Drug convictions alone account for more than 80 percent of the total increase in the federal prison population from 1985 to 1995.
In 2008, four of five drug arrests were for possession, and only one in five was for distribution;
fully half of all drug arrests were for marijuana offenses.
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But keep supporting BIG government intervention into American's lives...it IS who you right wingers REALLY are...you are not for less government, you are just for less Democrats running it...
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