American Exceptionalism.

official1

Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va), who is introducing a bill to reform the U.S. criminal justice system:

“Let’s start with a premise that I don’t think a lot of Americans are aware of. We have five percent of the world’s population; we have 25 percent of the world’s known prison population. There are only two possibilities here: either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States; or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice.”

Well, which is it?

Joel

Joel Anderson —blackink —  writes about sports, politics, crime, courts, and other issues far beyond his competence at BuzzFeed. He has worked at media outlets in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Atlanta and contributed to a number of publications, including The Root and The American Prospect, among many others.

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  • Scott

    I doubt we here in the US have any idea how many folks are really in prisons in places like the USSR, China, North Korea or other workers’ paradises.

    That said, yes I think we do do some things in the criminal justice system more efficiently.

  • blackink12

    As far as being unsure about accurate prison counts in other countries, that much is certainly true. We really have no way of knowing. But a clue to the source of the figure might be found here: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/news_details.php?news_id=993&year=2009.

    It’s known as the World Prison Population List. The study seems to line up with Webb and Gawande’s stat about the U.S. prison pop while acknowledging the many flaws in the survey.

    And in all fairness, Webb did qualify his remarks with “the world’s known prison population.”

  • It may be possible that we have the most evil people in the world … and perhaps most of them live outside the prison system.

  • Scott

    I get tired of the comparison between the world and the US. Yes, we have more people in prison than some countries. However, the US is the most ethnically and religiously heterogeneous republic in the world. We invented the modern republic and even in the worst times, such as the Bush/Gore fight there were never any military troops in the street or threat of a military coup. That is the true American exceptionalism.

  • ladyfresshh

    Well the prison system is pretty much a joke at the reform aspect. So reforming reform institutions (fine groan, yes i just wanted to type that) might be a good idea since the currently system pretty much resembles a hamster on a wheel.

    Sans comparisons to other prison systems, i still think we do not have much to be proud of regarding actual reform.