Vineyardsaker has a provocative post on Ahmadinejad’s description of America as a “big prison.” He posts this chilling data (emphasis added):
Incarcerations per 100,000 population (sample):
1014____Texas (in 1999) (governor George W. Bush)
1013____Louisiana (2001)
715_____United States of America (2001)
584_____Russian Federation
554_____Belarus
487_____Cuba
416_____Ukraine
402_____South Africa
388_____Singapore
267_____Namibia
253_____Tunisia
248_____Taiwan
210_____Poland
204_____Chile
194_____Iran
189_____Hong Kong (China)
178_____Czech Republic
177_____Greenland (Denmark)
176_____Jamaica
174_____Israel
173_____Libya
169_____Brazil
169_____Mexico
161_____New Zealand
158_____El Salvador
146_____Lebanon
142_____United Kingdom: England & Wales
129_____Portugal
126_____Colombia
125_____Republic of (South) Korea
121_____Egypt
119_____China
116_____Canada
Now surely, some regimes have more draconian prisons than the US. But consider the absolute reality of the situation. American prisons are also worse than some other nations’, with widespread rape, brutality, inter-prison gang violence. And we can’t forget that half or so of American prisoners are in there for non-crimes — victimless offenses against the state, such as drug, gun and tax violations. Then there are hundreds of thousands of property criminals and others who, for all their criminality, surely do not deserve being shoved in cages for years on end. America’s terribly sorry record on prisons alone would seem to put the lie to the idea of this country as the world’s greatest shining embodiment of freedom and human dignity. Before Americans talk about liberating the rest of the world, they should look at the rape rooms in their own neighborhoods, housing hundreds of thousands of non-violent enemies of the state.