The furor over Michael Vick is a perfect example of why the USA has such a high prison population [View All]

[Cali_Democrat]

The absurdly high prison population in the USA is not only a result of draconian government measures, but it's also driven by
American citizens who wish to see their neighbors behind bars when they are either no threat to society or have already served their time in jail.

The furor over Michael Vick really makes it easy to see why the United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world. Not only do we like to wage violent, unjust wars in foreign lands, but we also like to lock up our citizens like no other country in the world.

The United States has the largest prison population in the world by far. 1/4 of all prisoners IN THE WORLD are locked up in US jails:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.12253738.html

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners.

Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.

The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London.

Obama never praised Vick. Obama praised Jeffrey Lurie for giving an ex-convict a second chance. This is what people don't understand. The failure to give convicted felons a second chance leads to things like an absurdly high incarceration rate in the USA. When when people do get out of jail, it becomes difficult for them to find jobs and become productive members of society. They are then usually driven to crime once again.

There are many more people like Michael Vick that deserve a second chance and they are rotting in jail.