From sea to shining sea: The United States of America putting more people in cages

The United States, the “land of the free”, imprisons more people than any other country, including China.

The U.S. has more than 2.3 million people behind bars. China, with four times the population has 1.6 million.

The U.S. has 751 people incarcerated per 100,000. England has 151, Germany 88, and Japan 63.

The incarceration rates of prisoners in the U.S. stayed about the same from 1925 to 1975 at about 110 per 100,000 people.

Then, coinciding with the war on drugs, the rate began to dramatically rise until America became number one in the world.

According to a report released in December of 2008 from the US Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses in state and federal prisons are over 600,000.

According to the US Department of Justice, 30-40 percent of all current prison admissions involve crimes that have no direct or obvious victim other than the perpetrator. Nearly a third of all prison admissions are from non violent drug offenses.