So, What is pissing you off tonight?

[Uncle Joe]

75. And yet we have more of our citizens in prison than any of those three nations and possibly

more than all three of them put together.

http://www.topix.com/forum/world/china/TUTSHGNVMTLVGK6RF

US Has 5% Of Worlds Population Yet 25% of World Prison

"The U.S. corrections system has gone through an unprecedented expansion during the last few decades with a more than 400% jump in the prison population and a corresponding boom in the prison construction. At the end of 2008, 2.3 million adults were in state, local, or federal custody, with another $5.1 million on probation or parole...Globally, the United States has 5% of the world's population but 25% of its prisoners."

What's fueled the growth, the report says, is "tough drug enforcement, stringent sentencing laws, and high rates of recidivism."

(snip)

The U.S. prison industry now directly employs about 777,000 people and the Labor Department expects the prison labor market to grow 9% by 2018, accompanied by a projected 16% increase in the number of parole and probation officers. "By comparison, there were 880,000 workers employed in the entire U.S. auto manufacturing sector."

Of course, there's a host of moral and social dilemmas created by high rates of imprisonment -- "increased income inequality and more concentrated poverty" and "the fact that African Americans and Hispanics are far more likely than whites to be incarcerated," for starters.