America Sets Record High for Prisoners

The United States is truly a land of plenty; just ask your local warden. The USA has reached a record high ratio of people in prison. Over one in 100 adults are behind bars, which adds up to 2.3 million people, a number greater than even China’s prison population in both size and percentage. (Mind you, China’s general population dwarfs that of the US by over 1 billion people.)

But what does this mean? Do Americans commit more crimes? Are our cops that totally badical that they catch all the bad guys? Maybe it’s just that US criminals are dumb enough to get caught. Over the past two decades, state spending on corrections has increased 127 percent. In the same amount of time, education funding rose only 21 percent.

Tags: China, Prison, United States