Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> StandDown Texas Project

Criminal Law

: StandDown Texas Project

Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations'

By standdown

That's the title of a report by Adam Liptak in today's New York Times.  LINKThe United States has less than 5 percent of the world?s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world?s prisoners. Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes ? from writing bad checks to using drugs ? that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations. Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on April 23, 2008 (boomark / email).