The US: Incarceration shocking-data

DUFL Press comments on Christopher Glazek’s “Raise the Crime Rate” in the latest issue of n+1:

The United States is now the most incarcerated country in the world (not quite a shocker)

The United States is the second-most incarcerated country in history (Stalin’s Soviet Union has the distinction in that category)

The United States likely may be the first country in the history of the world to count more rapes for men than for women

One in three black baby boys can expect to spend part of his life in prison (unfortunately, not news)

The United States spends $200 billion on the correctional system each year, which exceeds the GDP of 25 US states and 140 foreign countries

The criminal justice sector inflates local population of prison zones for purposes of congressional districting and social spending; thousands of people are moved from urban districts, which need public money, to rural districts; prisoners bolster the voting power of said rural districts while being unable to vote themselves.

From n + 1:

Christopher Glazek

Raise the Crime Rate 

The nation’s prisons now contain more inhabitants than any American city save New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. And yet there is no “prison correspondent” at any of the nation’s major newspapers. This isn’t entirely the papers’ fault. Even if reporters were sent to the prisons, they could be denied entry: the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment does not prevent prison authorities from barring the press. The article is here.