An entry posted on Foreign Policy’s “Passport” blog yesterday cited the BBC’s in depth report on prison life. Specifically, a chart on this page.
I’m still reading the BBC’s articles on this topic, which are great, but what I have issue with is the tone of the comment on the Passport blog. To quote:
Seven tenths of a percent of America is behind bars. That doesn’t sound like much, right? Well, that is actually more than 2 million people. And get this: prisoners in China are only .118 percent of the total population, while Brazil locks up only .183 percent of its citizens.
The implication is that there are a LOT of people in US prisons. While it may be true that perhaps there are too many people in US prisons, I’d like to take a moment to clarify the disparity between US and, say, Chinese prisons.
We like to think of the Chinese government as having an iron-clad grip on its citizens, but this is a half-truth. First off, China has 1.3 billion people, and most live in rural areas. Families and communities take care of crime, not a legislature and police force, and one can imagine that crimes like stealing and rape are handled much differently than in a large city.
Other factors, such as the “disappearance” of enemies of the state, China’s extradition policy, their execution policy, as well as corruption within law enforcement all influence this statistic. Be careful when comparing things, prison rates in Brazil or China are very different from those in most developed countries for many reasons.
Not that I don’t think that we may be a bit over-zealous with our drug possession policy 