Thursday, February 28, 2008  1 in 100 American adults are in
prison  The United States has now reached an incarceration rate
of 1 in every 99.1 adults, the highest rate in the world. We're
spending an enormous amount of money to train people to be
hardened criminals by throwing people convicted of nonviolent
drug-related crimes into prisons with real criminals.  Finland,
by contrast, has one of the lowest incarceration rates in the
world, which has been in place for over 30 years. There is no
correlation between crime rates and incarceration rates. In my
opinion, we should decriminalize drug use, get rid of mandatory
minimums, and adopt a model much closer to Finland's, where only
violent offenders are imprisoned. Those who cause other kinds of
harm to others should be required to make restitution to their
victims.   Eamon Knight said...  But you're such a Gawdly
nation!  Brian Moore said...  It's absolutely terrible. And to
some extent, (not sure if there's actual data on this)
incarceration may increase cri