From Atrios we learn that we’ve won–we’ve finally overtaken Russia. The U.S. now has the largest prison population in the world.
We have over 2 million in jail. That comes to 702 prisoners per 100,000 population. …The Sentencing Project says a major cause is the war on drugs. Whereas in 1980, there were 40,000 in jail for drug crimes, now there are 450,000, “three-fourths of them black or Latino, though drug use is no higher in those groups than among whites.”
From Talk Left
