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.
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.

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