According to a newly published report, 2,319,258 Americans were behind bars as of January 2008. This means 1 in 99 Americans currently reside in Federal, State or local prisons!
In order to put this alarming number in to perspective, I decided to compare the US inmate population to the population of the states and cities within America. Here is the conclusion:
16 of the 50 US states have less population than the 2.3 million Americans who are behind bars! In other words if all the US inmates are put in to one state, their numbers would slightly be less than the whole population of the state of Nevada but more than either states of: New Mexico, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont or Wyoming. The number of US prisoners are higher than the population of the last 4 listed states combined!
– Comparing to the US cities, a city filled with US inmates would rank as the 4th populated city in the United States, only falling behind New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The city of inmates would have more population that other major US cities such as Houston, Phoenix, San Diego, Dallas, Detroit, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Denver or San Jose.
The document also reported that the United States incarcerates more people than any other nation, far ahead of more populous China which has 1.5 million people behind bars. The US is also among the world leaders in capital punishment. According to Amnesty International, its 53 executions in 2006 were exceeded only by China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and Sudan. (Iran executes higher percentage of its population than any other country)
While the United States government (or the land of the free as she still wish to be called !) is blaming the people of the middle east and the rest of the world for its lack of sense of security , it is quietly putting more and more of its own disenfranchised population behind bars. Unless America quickly address the source of it’s growing social problems, it may soon find out that the true challenge to the it’s security, does not reside outside the US borders but within America….and by noone but the millions of Americans who have been left behind. 2.3 million of them already behind bars and many others: not yet!.
Many US inmates are released much earlier than the term of their verdict due to the overcrowding and if there were enough room available, the actual number of inmates would have substantially been higher than 2.3 million . But if US chose to continue this path; in order to deal with the prison overcrowding, it can always consider forming a new country to exile all of its inmates to. Then let them become armed by international arm dealers as well as by Russia, China, Iran etc and then US can attack its new enemy but now as a foreigner! The new country can be called aciremA which would be nothing but a mirror image of America.
Scary how American society in so many ways resembles Iran; Instead of addressing the roots of their self-inflicted social problems and violence, they both incarcerate or execute their citizens. References: Associated Press: Feb 28, 2008, Wikipedia
