McManus, Emerald City is too crowded

For your consideration, a brief set of statistics which provide a glance at our bloated prison system:

-The United States has a prison population of 2.3 million, far more than any other nation and nearly 25% of the world’s total inmate population.

-751 out of 100,000 Americans are behind bars, compared with 627 for Russia, 151 for England and 63 for Japan

-Among adult Americans, 1 in every 100 has been incarcerated

-40,000 Americans were given jail time for drug crimes in 1980. Today, nearly 500,000 are jailed for similar offenses.

These figures have drawn sharp criticism from international analysts, who ultimately dispute the effectiveness and waste of the harsh American penal model. (American prosecutors contend that the stricter system has helped reduce nonviolent crime rates. Too bad that the United States’ domestic murder rate remains four times that of European nations. I wonder if gun availability has something to do with that?) To me, it seems evident that our prison (and legal) system requires an intense re-examination. Perhaps we should take a cue from our European neighbors and reshape our expensive (war on) drugs policy.