> If you exclude crimes which are lesser or are not offenses in other countries we'd
have a far more comparative level of imprisonment. Additionally China has a higher
fraction in prison, if you include 're-education camps' as prisons. I find it
interesting that the three most powerful nations have the highest prison
populations....
>
> On the other hand, since most crime here is commited by criminals on other
criminals, I can't say that you could call all of our prisoners 'oppressed'.
And what about the war on drugs, which in a rational world would duly be classified as a crime against humanity? Apart from that, your prison system (and in fact just about all the prison systems of the so-called "civilized" nations) are simply barbaric. Little better than concentration camps, really.
>>As far as I know the only throught crimes here in the US are pornographic pedophilia, telling the President what you really think of him, looking at female co-workers the wrong way, and disliking the publicly protected ethnic groups.<<
And that's another problem. But forget thought crimes, facing jail for possession of some MJ is oppression enough, IMHO.