NATION : U.S. Leads in Incarcerations
The United States has the world’s highest imprisonment rate on record, with more than 1 million people in prison or jail, a private group that favors alternative punishments reported today.
“Despite all the claims, the same policies that have helped make us a world leader in incarceration have clearly failed to make us a safer nation,” said Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project, who wrote the report.
For every 100,000 U.S. residents, 426 are behind bars awaiting trial or serving time for crimes committed, the report said. That is the highest incarceration rate in the world, it said, ahead of South Africa’s rate of 333 people imprisoned per 100,000 residents and the Soviet Union’s rate of 268 per 100,000.
For black American males, the rate is 3,109 per 100,000, compared to South Africa’s 729 per 100,000.
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