Prison populations. Merica is the winner!

[Rum]

I was watching QI earlier and a rather startling and shocking fact was presented. Apparently more than one in every hundred males in the USA are in prison and it has the highest rate of imprisonment in the world. The programme also pointed out that the system uses its inmates as a cheap form of labour which undercuts quite a surprising number of competitors.

All U.S. army helmets, for example, are made by prisoners, paid at 25C an hour max.

I have always admired much of the American approach to liberty etc. but fucken hell. ( I dug down into it a bit so here's a link)

More here: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/researc ... t-2005.pdf

[Ian]

I thought we were third per capita behind Russia and South Africa. Now we're #1?! Woo-hoo!


Maybe legalizing pot will affect some massive changes...

[Atheist-Lite]

A nation founded on genocide and breaking away from it's responsible owners was never gonna amount to very much in regards of ethics. They invented a lot of myths and almost believe the smell of their own bull but they ain't got a clue how to do anything right, they need a gun to prove a point. Good thing their on the other side of the atlantic. Hope they stay there for a good while once their currency collapses. They can get coked up and build a wall around themselves for all I care.

[Santa_Claus]

Yeah, the Americans were criticising the Chinese (back when they could afford to) over goods made by forced labour being exported to the US...........Chinese pointed out that the US Prison system uses forced labour to do exactly the same thing. If I recall correctly, office furniture is a big thing.

[Ian]

[Santa_Claus]

A nation founded on genocide by religous nutters & rejects too barmy even for Europe and breaking away from it's responsible owners over a tax dispute was never gonna amount to very much in regards of ethics.

[Rum]

Yeah, the Americans were criticising the Chinese (back when they could afford to) over goods made by forced labour being exported to the US...........Chinese pointed out that the US Prison system uses forced labour to do exactly the same thing. If I recall correctly, office furniture is a big thing.

Officer furniture was mentioned. A large proportion of it is made in U.S.prisons..bizarrely.

[HomerJay]

Apparently more than one in every hundred males in the USA are in prison and it has the highest rate of imprisonment in the world.

I can't see your point, do you mean that is too many? or perhaps not enough?

[Ian]

Yeah, the Americans were criticising the Chinese (back when they could afford to) over goods made by forced labour being exported to the US...........Chinese pointed out that the US Prison system uses forced labour to do exactly the same thing. If I recall correctly, office furniture is a big thing.

Officer furniture was mentioned. A large proportion of it is made in U.S.prisons..bizarrely.

I wrote a rather lengthy report on prison privatization when I took a penology class in college (my major was criminal justice). I'd be interested to see how much that industry has changed over the last fifteen years. Regardless, cheap labor isn't a Justice Dept. policy - judges don't sentence someone based on whether or not the state's prisons are meeting a production quota.

It's definitely exploitation of cheap labor, but it's exploitation after the fact. I don't think the prison population would be much (or at all) lower if there were rules against prisoners being used for labor. Whatever they produce, from license plates to helmets, it still costs far more to keep someone locked up. The per capita prison population here is too high for a variety of other sad reasons.