The screencap comes from the headlines of the February 29, 2008 edition of Demoracy Now (get the rest here: http://www.democracynow.org/…/headlines ). Here is the blurb so search engines can read it:
"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."
I think there's something seriously wrong with a society that has one-hundredth of it's population in jail. I know some people want to just blame only the individual criminals for this, saying that these people have a choice to commit crimes or not. While I agree that they do have that choice--I do wonder about a society that produces people that allows such choices to be acceptable.
I sometimes feel like we're the inverse of the Soviet Union--but in a bad way. There was a case of a Soviet serial killer. If I recall correctly, there was just one cop who was treating a string of murders as serial killings by one man. However, he got no support from authorities because "The Soviet state does not produce serial killers."
Obviously, they were in denial and I think if we only lay blame for crime at the feet of the criminals we may be guilty of the same crime the Soviet "authorities" committed.
And I'm not even going to get into the fact that minorities make up the majority of jail populations because CLEARLY it's their fault. I mean, COME ON--you just KNOW it's in their genes!
/sarcasm
Mobile post sent by thepete using Utterz.
Replies.Orignal From: 1 in 100 Americans are in Jail
No comments:
Post a Comment