General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: "For an educated middle-class woman to face public arrest and a strip search is almost unimaginable" [View all]sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)abuses in her country. It is about OUR system of justice which we claim is the 'best in the world'. The very fact that you are comparing it to one that is known for its abuses makes the point completely. But even there, they do not have the huge numbers of people incarcerated that we do here. One in every 100 Americans spends time in jail now. We are the number one incarceration capital of the world.
How about comparing it to Norway's eg? That should be our standard. After all it isn't hard to be slightly better than some of the worst countries in the world.
Either we have far more criminals than anyone else in the entire world, or something else is going on. We beat China which has a far larger population than we do eg.
Perhaps turning our prisons into profit making corporations has something to do with keeping them filled. We also incarcerate people for crimes that would not carry jail sentences in most other civilized nations.
No one eg, comes to the US to study our prison system as a model, as they used to do.
As one law professor said, 'people who do study our prison system from other countries, come away horrified'.