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by MrZongle2 4049 days ago
> The United States has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners.

This sums it up for me.

Here in the United States, we do have issues with the justice and penal systems. But these number alone do not paint the full picture.

In other countries, if you're convicted of a crime you may have a body part cut off. You may be executed. Or you may simply "disappear". In any of these cases, you're not considered a prisoner.
2 comments
dragonwriter 4049 days ago
> In other countries, if you're convicted of a crime you may have a body part cut off. You may be executed.

You can be executed in the US, too. In fact, the US executes more people per year than anyone but China and a handful of countries in the Middle East.

So adding the possibility of execution into the comparison doesn't actually make the US look better.

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MrZongle2 4049 days ago
"So adding the possibility of execution into the comparison doesn't actually make the US look better."

Apples and oranges. Consider this report: http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/10/world/amnesty-international-de...

In 2012, the US executed 43 people. The number of executions in China? Believed to be in the thousands.

How did the condemned in the United States die? Here's the breakdown: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/methods-execution . Note that all of these individuals were afforded appeals and legal representation.

Some of the other countries? Maybe no trial at all. Maybe a completely rigged trial. Appeals? Doubtful but short. Time between being charged with the crime and execution? Perhaps days, as opposed to years in the United States. The method of execution? Anything goes; in North Korea the Kim regime has become especially creative here, dropping mortars and using AA guns to kill prisoners.

Is the U.S. justice system faulty? Yes. Can one make a compelling argument against the death penalty? Probably. Can an honest argument be made that the United States and China (let alone some of the other countries on the list) are even in the same league? Doubtful.

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dragonwriter 4049 days ago
> Can an honest argument be made that the United States and China (let alone some of the other countries on the list) are even in the same league?

No one is in the same league as China with regard to the death penalty (so the "let alone" is backwards, there), but leaving aside China and handful of Middle Eastern countries the United States is far out in the "heavy use" of the death penalty compared to every other country on Earth.

So you probably don't want to bring up the "in some countries, criminals might get killed instead of imprisoned" in a discussion of how the US is worse on imprisonment than every other country on Earth, because, compared to all but a handful of the ~200 countries on the planet, adding in consideration of the death penalty on top of incarceration exacerbates rather than mitigates the ways in which the US is worse.

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the_imp 4049 days ago
> In other countries, if you're convicted of a crime you may have a body part cut off. You may be executed. Or you may simply "disappear". In any of these cases, you're not considered a prisoner.

But are those really the countries you would like the USA to be compared with?

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MrZongle2 4049 days ago
Right or wrong, when it comes to incarceration and execution rates, we are compared with these other countries.
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