[USA] Prisoners of Ideology : America's Draconian Approach to Criminal Justice / Counterpunch, 2 March 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/gasper03022007.html
PHIL GASPER
"For the past thirty years, the US has been on an imprisonment binge unprecedented in world history. While the US has less than 5 percent of the world's population, it now has 25 percent of the world's prisoners. In other words, the country that often proclaims itself the freest in the world, imprisons its population at a rate over six times higher than the rest of the planet. The US incarceration rate stands at 737 per 100,000, over five times higher than Great Britain and over twelve times higher than Norway. The statistics for minority populations are even more shocking. For Latinos, the imprisonment rate is twice the national average. For Blacks it is four times the national average, with over one million African-American men in prison or jail. In 2002, 10.4 percent of all Black males between the ages of 25 and 29 were imprisoned, and the numbers have not improved since then."