It is not the % of people in prison that makes a police state. Most of the folks in prison are there for armed robbery, home invasion, murder, rape, and other violent crimes. If you do that crime plan on sitting in the box forever as far as I am concerned.
This poor guy....I am ashamed of a system that produces this result
IIRC, at least a large plurality of prisoners are non-violent drug offenders.
You might want to check how many non-violent vs. violent inmates are sitting in cells these days. Looks like the majority are in for non-violent crimes.
LOL. Apparently you've forgotten about our Tyrannical War on Drugs.
Untold thousands of non-criminal Americans are now in prison, filling them to overflowing, often with draconian minimum mandatory sentences.
This has produced the ridiculous side effect of creating a situation where real criminals, who commit acts of horrible violence and massive fraud, and who should be kept out of society, are released prematurely, only to offend again.
Thus crime rates become excessively elevated, due to the fact that a vast majority of violent and fraudulent crime is committed by a relatively small group of people who offend repeatedly, being incarcerated and then released, over and over again. This is the "revolving door" situation which modern "crime-fighting" has created.
America's contraband laws crowd our prisons with countless honest, nonviolent people who have never even committed an actual crime against anyone. They are simply guilty of possessing or distributing something which has been declared illegal by the state.
A better arrangement would be to put real criminals in prison and keep them there, instead of releasing them early to make room for victims of Tyrannical law.
As a defense attorney I can tell you that a lot of people are in prison for illegally carrying a firearm or simple drug possession.
There are just too many laws.
We need to keep it simple and lock up people for dangerous crimes like robbery, sexual assault, etc.