From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Aug 01 2002 - 15:11:22 MDT
--- CurtAdams@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 8/1/02 9:29:43,
> charleshixsn@earthlink.net writes:
>
> >I believe that the US has a larger fraction of it's
> citizenry in jail
> >than any other government, except, perhaps, for one
> or two extreme
> >autocracies. But we are told that it's for our own
> good. Perhaps the
> >term "benign" needs a bit of rethinking.
>
> Yes, the US has a lot of people in jail; but it does
> have a relatively high
> violent crime rate, which *partially* justifies
> that. Taxes and regulations
> are less onerous than most other Western countries.
> What's the tradeoff
> between taxation and unjust imprisonment? It's not
> so obvious - the
> taxation sucks up more man-hours but unjust
> imprisonment is less
> evenly distributed. In any case, the EU governments
> are pretty benign
> too; you have to remember that Western government is
> still far from
> the norm worldwide or historically.
It must also be noted that the US has the most
ethnically diverse society in the developed world.
Minorities make up a majority of the prison population
in most every developed nation, and in proportion to
their percent of the overall population, explain the
entirety of the significantly large US prison
population. For example, in Australia, the percent of
the population in prison is wholly relative to the
percent of the Aborigine population relative to the
overall population and their poverty level.
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