[Slapshot68]

The lib answer will be, of course, to let everyone out.

[JoSixChip]

How many of them are illegals?

[Eric in the Ozarks]

That’s what they have in mind in Iowa. I read that they’re planning to close the old penitentiary at Fort Madison, which dates back to 1840 or so, and build a new prison. State employees want to keep the old place open to save their jobs.

[dfwgator]

“Thank God we’ve got penitientiaries.” - Richard Pryor

[wideawake]

In other news - surely unrelated - more American children were being raised without a father than ever before, and fewer Americans were attending weekly religious services than ever before.

[Always Right]

Doing the time Americans don’t want to.

[FlingWingFlyer]

" For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison,..."

I don't want to change the subject but what does that say about our society?

[BGHater]

What do you expect. Prison is a business now

We are creating more laws for everything.

[SubGeniusX]

The report said the United States is the world's incarceration leader, far ahead of more populous China with 1.5 million people behind bars. It said the U.S. also is the leader in inmates per capita (750 per 100,000 people), ahead of Russia (628 per 100,000) and other former Soviet bloc nations which make up the rest of the Top 10.

PING!

[mysterio]

Stop putting people in jail for possessing a plant or plant extract. Will solve the problem pretty quickly.

[Vigilanteman]

There would be fewer people in prison and fewer competiting to get in if this old fashioned device were used a bit more liberally. Does that make me a liberal, too?

[jaydubya2]

i wonder how many are in for non-violent drug related crimes?

[The_Republican]

And the problem is.....?

[DungeonMaster]

This record is broken everyday. Having the most powerful government in the world certainly has it’s drawbacks. There’s also a bit of a problem with the whole melting pot thing.

[the_devils_advocate_666]

I think we should make all the prisoners spend 8 hours a day pedaling exercise bikes plugged into energy storage devices. They could at least power their own prisons.

[gdani]

Sometime in the future, state budgets will overwhelmingly consist of two things: Prisons & Medicaid.

[stylin19a]

For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison...

Using updated state-by-state data, the report said 2,319,258 adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008 — one out of every 99.1 adults, and more than any other country in the world....

It said the U.S. also is the leader in inmates per capita (750 per 100,000 people), ...

new math..pick a figure...any figure...

I'm wonderin if some of these other countries kill people when we put 'em in prison for the same crime.

[deuteronlmy232]

When one percent of the adult population is in prison, we have to many laws.

[CGTRWK]

The practice in other countries, even Islamic ones, of whipping smalltime criminals and then sending them home that afternoon has a lot to recommend it.

Putting borderline mentally ill people in cages with other sociopaths (including most of the guards) for months or years at a time, and then sending them back out one day with a ‘do not hire’ note in their file works about as well as you’d expect it to.

[uncbob]

End the stupid WOD

[CarryingOn]

That should surprise no one. One would expect more crime equates to more prisoners. What might be more surprising would be the number of criminals that have not been caught or convicted and are still at large. Big murder cities often only resolve half of murder cases. These imprisonment numbers well understate America’s crime problem.