The Economist (June 20)
“With less than 5% of the world’s population, the United States holds roughly a quarter of its prisoners: more than 2.3m people.” Per capita, “the incarceration rate in the land of the free has risen seven-fold since the 1970s, and is now five times Britain’s, nine times Germany’s and 14 times Japan’s…. There is no single fix for America’s prisons, but there are 2.3m reasons to try.”
Washington Post (April 30)
It is misleading to compare recent U.S. riots to “the unrest that followed the verdict in the 1992 Rodney King police brutality trial…. The fact is that steep increases in income inequality and mass incarceration, as well as racial disparities in school discipline that start in preschool, mean that the prospects of young African American men are worse now than they were then.”
Tags: Incarceration, Inequality, Misleading, Police brutality, Racial disparities, Riots, Rodney King, U.S., Unrest, Verdict