1 in 100 Americans are in Jail

Part one of my new blog series "Things I Meant to Blog on Last Week."



^_^



First up, according to the headlines from the February 29, 2008 episode of Democracy Now (here: http://www.democracynow.org/…/headlines ):



"A new report has found that a record 1-in-100 American adults are behind bars. According to the Pew Center, the prison population has grown by 25,000, even though the rate of violent crimes has decreased. 1-in-100 black women are jailed, compared to 1-in-350 white women. 1-in-36 Hispanic men and 1-in-15 black men are in jail or prison. The US has the highest rate of prisoners in the world, with more than 2.3 million people behind bars."



One-hundredth of America are criminals. There is something seriously wrong with this. Like, on a cultural and/or societal level. And how the heck can crime rates drop while the number of people in jail go up? Does that mean more people are involved in each crime?



And why is it so acceptable for people to commit crimes? Clearly, there's no social stigma attached to it or else one out of every hundred Americans wouldn't be breaking laws.



Then again, when you've got the guy in the White House invading countries that haven't actually attacked us, I suppose you can't blame too many people for thinking maybe the law isn't so important? I don't know...
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