Land of the Free?

From: US Rates of Incarceration:A Global Perspective (.pdf)

Some US states imprison six times as many people as do nations of comparable population.

The US rate of incarceration is the highest in the world.

The US incarcerates at a rate 4 to 7 times higher than other western nations such as the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany and up to 32 times higher than nations with the lowest rates such as Nepal, Nigeria, and India.

A major cause of such high numbers is the length of the prison sentences in the United States. One of the criticisms of the United States system is that it has much longer sentences than any other part of the world.

Even though other countries have more prisoners annually, the fact that the United States keeps their prisoners longer causes the total rate to become higher.

To give an example, the average burglary sentence in the United States is 16 months, compared to 5 months in Canada and 7 months in England.

Looking at reasons for imprisonment will further clarify why the incarceration rate and length of sentences are so high. Some who prosecuted the War on Drugs now believe it caused a large increase in incarceration in the United States.

One of the biggest contributors to the United States' spike is the war on drugs. Around 1980, the United States had 40,000 people in prison for drug crimes Currently, the United States houses over 500,000 prisoners for these crimes. Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance said, "We now imprison more people for drug law violations than all of Western Europe (with a much larger population) incarcerates for all offenses".