Credit: Craig Haney

Let’s start with some basic facts. The United States of America, land of the free, home of the brave, has 4.4% of the world’s population and 22% of the people incarcerated.1 That works out to be 716 men and women per 100,000 of the national population. Compared to other Western democracies the U.S. is grotesquely out of line; Denmark is 73 out of 100,000; Norway is 72 per 100,000; Germany is 79, France is 98, the entire United Kingdom is 348. We hear about how large and dreadful the prisons of North Korea, Russia, or China are, but the truth is no other country on earth has anything like the American gulag.2

Let’s break it down further. As of April 2019, The American criminal justice system holds almost 2.3 million people in 1719 state prisons, 109 federal prisons, 1772 juvenile correctional facilities, 3163 local jails, and 80 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, immigration […]