At least when it comes to locking up our own citizens.
5% of the world's population, 25% of the world's prisoners. Lock up a few more people and we'll have a higher percentage of prisoners than the percentage of energy consumption.
Then again, if you've read any of the reports from Moscow about how gangs of skinheads are beating up anyone who appears to be a foreigner (and killing some of them), how business disputes and bad press reports are handled with assassinations, then you could argue that the Russians aren't locking up enough people. You can make the same point about the drug gangs in Mexico. The argument can be made that by locking up our criminals, we at least try to hold them accountable for their actions.
At least we generally don't lock people up for defending themselves. Unlike in (formerly) Great Britain, which regards criminals as a protected class.
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We've been #1 for many years. Even in absolute numbers, only the Chinese lock up more people than we do, and they have an insanely larger percentage of the world's population within their borders.
55% of those locked up in the American gulag are guilty of no real ("natural") crime. Rather, they're guilty of political crimes -- crimes that are invented by government, rather than those that are inherently criminal in nature (such as, say, murder or rape, which inherently violate the rights of other people and thus are "natural" crimes). Most specifically, the political crime of selling various substances that people want to people who want them in a consensual commercial transaction where both parties to the transaction are happy.
In short, the American gulag has more political prisoners in it than any other gulag on the planet. Even in China, political prisoners make up a smaller percentage of their prison population than here in America. "America the Free", my ass...
- Badtux the Sovok Penguin
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