United States incarceration rate

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The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. It is home to a little less than 5% of the world’s population, but holds 25% of the world’s prisoners.^[1] According to a U.S. Justice Department Report, as of this year, 7 million people are in prison, on probation, or on parole. That means 1 in every 32 Americans are in the system.^[2] According to the International Center of Prison Studies at King’s College London, out of that 7 million 2.3 million are behind bars. China is in a far second place with 1.6 million, although China’s population is over 4 times that of America.

Not only does the U.S. have the highest number of inmates, the United States is number 1 in highest incarceration rates as well. America has about 751 people in prison for every 100,000 in population.^[3] In comparison to other industrialized nations, Russia comes in 2nd with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 in population. For comparison, with other industrialized countries, Germany has 88, England’s rate is 151, and Japan has a rate of 63. The median of the world is 125. This is about 1/6th of the American rate.

[edit] Causes

According to New York Times, “If lists were compiled based on annual admissions to prison per capita, several European countries would outpace the United States.” It’s the length of these sentences in the United States that is a huge cause of such high numbers. One of the criticisms of the U.S. system is that America has much longer sentences than any part of the world. Even though other countries have more prisoners annually, the fact that America keeps their prisoners longer causes the total rate to become higher. To give an example, the average burglary sentence in the United States is 16 months, compared to Canada’s 5 month and England’s 7 month average. Looking at reasons for imprisonment will further clarify why the incarceration rate and length of sentences are so high.

One of the biggest contributors is the United States’ spike in the fight against the war on drugs. Around 1980, the U.S. had 40,000 people for drug crimes.^{[citation needed]} Currently, the U.S. houses over 500,000 prisoners for these crimes. Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance said, “We now imprison more people for drug law violations than all of Western Europe, with a much larger population, incarcerates for all offences”

One partial, but significant cause of high incarceration rates is that America locks people up, some for a long time, for nonviolent crimes. The United States is one of the only advanced nations that imprison people for minor property crimes such as writing bad checks. Not only do these people serve time, some are sentenced to long stretches.^{[citation needed]}

Many also believe a cause for such a high rate is due to the fact of America’s high violent crime rate.^[who?] The murder rate in the U.S. is 4 times higher than western Europe. America is the most armed nation in the world. There is a reported 90 guns for every 100 people in the U.S. Out of the 875 million known guns in the world, the U.S. owns 270 million of them.^[4]

[edit] Effects

Within 3 years of being released 67% of the ex-prisoners are rearrested and 52% are actually re-incarcerated.^[5]

In 1995 the government allocated 5.1 billion dollars for new prison space. Every $100 million spend in construction will cost $1.6 billion in finance and operational costs over the next 3 decades.^[6] Taxpayers spend $60 billion a year for prisons.

[edit] Notes