robbie, not to dismiss your good intention and as well as the fact that African Americans are disproportionally high in US prison population, even if we dropped off every one of the African American prisoners from the statistics, the US would still be among the countries with highest incarceration rate -- which stands at roughly 400 per 100,000 -- way above rest of the developed/democratic/industrialized/western countries in the world. Again, I refer you to the world wide prison study in my earlier post, http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/rel/icps/world-prison-population-list-2005.pdf. The numbers don't lie. I think it's too simplistic to attribute solely the extraordinarily high prison rate in US to racial problems. On the other hand, Scandinavian countries have some of the hightest divorce rates in the world, yet their prison rates are among the lowest. So single mother/parent isn't a very good explanation to US either.
Scandinavian countries have very high per capita GDPs. The people there aren't hurting for money. You failed to normalize for that factor in your analysis. Single parent families + poverty = bad combination
Money may not buy happiness, especially since Scandanavian countries top the list with the highest suicide rates, but it removes a lot of the temptation for criminal activity. Maybe not drug use or white collar crime, but other types of crimes generall associated with the downtrodden. Money also buys a better education, healthcare and you general feel better about yourself. Bottomline, being poor sucks.
Bigtexx, please explain how the Scandinavians have very high GDP's when your biz school economics and country club GOP hatred of taxeswould predict wretched poverty.
i would be curious to see what our incarceration rate would be at if we eliminated the offenses related to mar1juana possession and selling. i still think we need to re-legalize the bud like we did with alcohol. other than that i am not too sure how to view the numbers at first glance. like am i really supposed to think that india is by far the safest nation in the world because of the extremely low imprisonment rate? the same goes for all of those african countries with very very low imprisonment rates. we know for a fact that many of the african "nations" are very lawless and corrupt. there are so many factors to take into account on why other nations have more people in prison and i am not too sure where to start.
They got hotter chicks. Seriously - I dunno. Maybe they export a lot of natural resources. I think Socialist systems are generally more viable with smaller, homogenous populations. That said - I'm still a capitalist.
Good point, which is why I posed the question of whether or not the high incarceration rate in the US can be directly attributed to the fact that America does a great job at enforcing law and order in its society, or whether the answer is as simple as "Americans are more violent and break more laws than anyone else."
There are single parent families in Scandanavia. I've heard that Iceland is practically a nation of bastards since marriage isn't seen a that big of a deal there.
That applies to Norway which is the third largest exporter of oil but not too Sweden or Denmark. Iceland has vast reserves of geothermal power but not much other than fish to export.
Agree. While an argument can be made that released prisoners in the PRC can vote unlike many states in the US they also execute more people and have much more crimes that mandate execution as the punishment. Plus while a released felon in the PRC could vote you could also be put in prison for your political beliefs in the PRC.
i think the problem is the lack of education, and i think it had something to do with the cultural difference, NOT racial problems. i still failed to understand why many African Americans did not put education as their top priority. Racism should not be a problem because the average income of Asian Americans is higher than that of white!!!
you make a point that is true but many people don't want to recognize. I know some people will bash me for even reading john mcwhorter's 'losing the race' and putting credit in it (like my african american studies prof did), but he made got points about the failure to push education. I can get the exact quote but basically there was a study of different ethnicities and what each group viewed as a good grade in a class. asians average answer was an A, whites a B, and african americans a C. even white families don't come up to the level at which asian families push education and that is why they are succeeding. education gives so many things and not just general knowledge. it also gives people emotional security and confidence that they can push themselves in life. anyhow...this thread is about why america has such a high imprisonment rate. maybe our weak public education system is a reason?
