[yesplorer]

China exceeds the Unites states by more than 1 billion people in terms of population yet the US jail more people than China?!

This seems shocking to say the least.(at least to me)

Yet the US is supposed to be less of a 'policed state' than China.

[vasilipupkin]

Have you considered the possibility that higher per capita numbers of jailed people may reflect police officers doing a better job? In China, it may be easier for example to bribe the police or the judge and avoid jail.

[JackC]

That's really not what's going on here. I mean, yes, the US probably has better police officers than China. But the real reason we have higher per capita numbers than anyone else (with the possible exception of North Korea) is not that we (and possibly North Korea) have the world's best police officers. It's that we quadrupled our prison population over the last thirty years (partly by increasing incarceration for drug crimes by 1200%) while the rest of the world ... didn't.

I mean, look at the numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...

- If you exclude some sub-100K-population countries that probably have weird statistics, the country with the next highest incarceration rate is Cuba, with only 75% the incarceration rate of the US. That's the _next highest_.

- Russia has 67% of our incarceration rate. That's the highest large country other than the US.

- There are only 21 countries that have even half of our incarceration rate, and let's say they're not the ones I think of as having the highest standard of living in the world.

- Looking at the western nations that the US traditionally compares itself to (depending who you think that is), the highest are probably Spain, England and Wales at 20% of our incarceration rate. Germany is at 11%. France is at 14%.

- In North America, Canada is at 16% of our incarceration rate. Mexico is at 29%.

In other words, we could let out _three out of four prisoners in the United States_, and we would still be locking up more people than any of the nations we consider our peers in terms of wealth, democracy, civil rights, etc.

Given the billions of dollars involved and the millions of lives destroyed and the decades this has been going on, we must by now have some pretty good evidence that our extraordinary, unprecedented strategy is better than the alternative, right? We're applying four times the average dose -- there must be a measurable effect by now.

Right?

[njharman]

I find it shocking that any person living in US (not sure if you do) finds this shocking. Did you not notice; the drug "war", militarization of police, commercialization of prison system, stupendous expansion of seizure laws? Did you not think those have repercussions?

[selectodude]

The US can account for every prisoner it has. China has a habit of just disappearing people and that isn't reported in their statistics.