The Prison State Of America

I believe this is probably true, and if it is, then our own prisons would surely be a serious indictment against this country. That's because our society has decided that the cure for all of society's ills (race, poverty, drugs, etc.) is to criminalize people and lock them up. And because of that, we have more people in our prisons than any other nation in the world (even those countries generally regarded as police states, with no freedoms or human rights). And that is true both as a raw total of prisoners, and as a percentage of the population. If we are not the world's biggest police state, then we are surely the world's biggest prison state -- and there is something seriously wrong with that.