Something Is Wrong

A nice chart, courtesy of Atrios:

One more sign of how truly terrible things are in the Greatest Country On Earth.  As if you needed more evidence.

And just remember, the next time some jerk tries to tell you that racism doesn't exist in this country, that George Zimmerman is not a part of this statistic.

Comments

Jerry Critter said…
Either we are a country of criminals or something is very wrong with our system of justice.
January 31, 2014 at 10:52 AM
Magpie said…
Explosive growth in the prison population as % of total population since about 1980.
In the 20 years that followed 1980 the number of female inmates increased 500% of what it was, probably related to the crack epidemic, but also because the social programs that could have bled away recourse to incarceration simply weren’t there. How much is being spent on prisons compared to higher education and employment skills training? That would be interesting.

Number of elderly people in prison skyrocketed since about 1980 – and bear in mind what that will do to health costs.
A huge proportion of prisoners are there for crimes that have no victims and weren’t violent, meaning their incarceration has nothing to whatever to do with protecting the public, which surely should be the principle aim of a civilised prison system.
January 31, 2014 at 5:48 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's Okay, Never Mind

Image
The woman in this picture, equipped with the weapons and ammunition shown, was found outside a National guard base. She is apparently a big Glenn Beck fan, and believed that the base was a FEMA concentration camp. Think she's the only one out there? You just know this sort of thing is not going to end well.
Read more

Wingnuts Slightly Annoyed about that $83 Million

Image
How can you look like a decrepit old geezer and an out of control two year old at the same time? I thought it might be nice to look in on wingnut world to see how they are taking yesterday's $83 million dollar Trump legal loss.  You kind of know that they will decide it shouldn't affect their opinion of him in any way, but it might be helpful to see just how the Republican party has trained them to reject any fact they don't like.  Not that surprisingly, a lot of the usual wingnut suspects didn't touch this loss at all, preferring to just ignore anything that interferes with their hateful daydreams, but here are a few excerpts from an article at Gateway Pundit, along with a sample of the hundreds of comments it received.  Enjoy.  Or not. "Trump attorney Alina Habba WENT OFF after the crooked New York City court slapped President Trump with an $83 million judgment for speaking out against the disgusting lies of a crazed woman who said he lured her into a Bergdorf Go
Read more

If a Tree Falls In the Woods

Image
 And nobody hears it, is it really running for President at all? First of all, a note about my absence lately:  My wife got me to sign up for an account at Threads, which is sort of like X without the assholes.  I've spent a little time establishing myself there, and I have to say, I do like the relatively immediate exchange of views, but I don't mean to give up my blog- there are still so many things that can't be dealt with in a couple hundred words, so, perhaps to your dismay, I am back. So, what motivated the above question is the fact that the Sunday New York Times today had seven articles about Trump, and absolutely zero about Kamala Harris.   The Republicans have a problem with Harris, in that virtually everyone who sees her likes her and immediately understands how qualified she is to be President.  They have tried mightily the last month to find some way to smear her, but have been spectacularly unsuccessful- the tactics of character assassination that worked so we
Read more