
List of Countries by Incarceration Rate - hmrmaxwell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate
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fpp
When you take out the distortion in some of the small countries where
population numbers are low (even below 100K), you're looking at a list of
totalitarian countries or countries were civil rights have deteriorated most
in the last years (i.e. sorted by that).

High incarceration rates most often indicate that governments are only in
power by threatening their people or spreading fear. On top of that you see a
(most likely) strong effect / high prisoner numbers created by the
"commercialization" of putting people into prison - countries where prisons
are run as a business.

Guaranteed prisoner numbers or occupancy levels agreed in such contracts
(another demonstration that business ethics don't exist anymore) strongly
contribute to high numbers and IMHO also express that governments in countries
were such contracts / approaches are allowed have completely lost touch to
their population.

In developed countries there are two diametrically opposite examples to where
governments are trending towards in the moment:

The UK currently considering to play catch-up with the US by also privatizing
prison "services" and guaranteeing inmate numbers / occupancy levels.

On the other side Sweden that just recently closed 4 prisons because they were
not needed anymore.

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tzs
> The UK currently considering to play catch-up with the US by also
> privatizing prison "services" and guaranteeing inmate numbers / occupancy
> levels

Privately run prisons in the US are not guaranteed inmate numbers or occupancy
levels. That's a common misconception due to poor reporting on how the
contracts are structured.

What they are actually guaranteed is a minimum payment. For instance, a
contract might say that the prison company will take and maintain up to 100
prisoners, and the State will pay them each year the greater of $100k/prisoner
or $9m.

This somehow gets reported as the contract guaranteeing that the State will
keep a 90% occupancy rate in that prison.

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efoto
And the first country I'd even consider worth living in from this list is #42
Uruguay. Do you know what's the irony? I'm a US citizen. And I'm ashamed.

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t0
Interesting note about North Korea.

>North Korea estimates 150,000 to 200,000 incarcerated, which roughly equals
the US imprisonment rate at 600-800 people incarcerated per 100,000

~~~
smcl
Is that including the large gulag-style prison camps?

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anpalton
And private prisons aren't going to help with this at all. Now we'll have
people lobbying for even more prisoners and stricter laws, just to get their
business growing.

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codex
This isn't useful unless you can also compare the crime rates in those
countries (does high incarceration reduce crime?) as well as the percentage of
drug offenses and the ease of drug import into those countries. I'd also like
to see the execution rate for some or these countries. A prisoner is not
incarcerated if they're dead.

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chalimacos
The US should get rid of its Old Testament vengeance mentality. You cannot
lock away social problems.

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forktheif
I like how the bottom of the list is so mixed. It seems to be extremely
prosperous first world nations with so few social problems they get little
crime, mixed with nations so poor, they can't afford police to catch criminals
or prisons to keep them in.

~~~
mattsfrey
That plus the factors of some localities that just kill people who commit bad
enough crimes / allow people to walk on bribes routinely / vigilante justice
etc

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BasDirks
It's because in the USA justice always prevails.

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mythealias
Actual number of prisoners and other details about each country:
[http://www.prisonstudies.org/info/worldbrief/wpb_stats.php?a...](http://www.prisonstudies.org/info/worldbrief/wpb_stats.php?area=all&category=wb_poptotal)

Although I think it would be more interesting to look at re-incarceration
rate.

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mtam
It would be interesting to see another column on the table with some sort of
criminality metric per 100,000 people.

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Tarang
This is a bit biased if one is to interpret the incarceration rate as a form
of the amount of crime.

Less developed countries look as if they have very little crime. The issue is
the justice system cannot cope with the amount of crime or the crime is simply
ignored due to corruption, bribery, etc.

~~~
mcv
It's not about crime, it's specifically about incarceration. The US locks
people up for a very long time for very minor crimes (particularly if they're
black). There's an industry that requires a steady stream of inmates, and they
bribe politicians and judges to provide those inmates.

The true crime doesn't come from the inmates, it comes from the people locking
them up.

~~~
matthewmacleod
Look, I mean... the US justice system has obvious problems. Too many people
going to prison, a racial bias, lack of rehabilitation... whatever. You'd be a
fool to deny that.

But is this really down to some kind of prison-industrial complex that
"bribe[s] politicians and judges to provide inmates"? That seems a little far-
fetched.

Let's use Hanlon's razor here - isn't it far more likely that the US
incarceration rate is an artefact of endemic inequality, poor education, and a
constant desire for politicians to appear "tough on crime"? Do we really need
to bring bribes into it?

~~~
redwall_hp
It definitely happens. I can only think of one concrete case off the top of my
head, so here:

>The "kids for cash" scandal unfolded in 2008 over judicial kickbacks at the
Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Two
judges, President Judge Mark Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael Conahan, were
accused of accepting money from Robert Mericle, builder of two private, for-
profit juvenile facilities, in return for contracting with the facilities and
imposing harsh sentences on juveniles brought before their courts to increase
the number of inmates in the detention centers.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal)

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ibsathish
Certainly looks like a biased list. Look at the bottom of the list and most of
them are from Africa where you'd know the crime rates are high. May be, they
are not 'punishable offenses' or they get let-off easily.

~~~
TelmoMenezes
The data is objective -- surely not 100% accurate, like most data -- but only
interpretations of it can be biased. There is obviously another important
variable: the countries' level of development. Very poor countries have low
incarceration rates because they don't have functional police and judicial
systems.

But you can compare the USA to the rest of the western world: Europe, UK,
Canada, Australia, New Zealand. These countries share very similar societies,
values, legal systems, forms of government and levels of economic development.
With this simple filter the anomaly becomes clear and bias is harder to claim.

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kawsper
I wonder why the rate is so high in Seychelles.

The only reason I know of the country is because it is used for evading tax in
EU, and because I got a job-offer from a company that operates there, but I am
a bit surprised of the high number.

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WatchDog
Seychelles has a small population and a piracy problem, which is probably why
they are so high on the list. I don't know much about Saint Kitt's, other than
those two no one comes close to the US.

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TazeTSchnitzel
What's up in Greenland? It has such a small population that I doubt it's a hub
of crime. Maybe Greenlanders live in poverty?

~~~
Sammi
They are still in a post colonialism desert walk. They were simply dragged to
fast from a traditional hunter gatherer society into the modern industrial
age. Denmark kidnapped their children, banned their language, built concrete
blocks from them to live in, which were unsuited for their traditional
lifestyle, and gave them alcohol to drink. Pretty much the same story as what
happened with most aborigines and natives in other colonies.

So of course things got bad. Lots of social issues. It is improving, more and
more young people are getting an education, but they have a lot of social
issues to deal with yet.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
I suppose I should have expected as much. :(

Well, I hope things will improve.

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rocco
Interesting that Italy is only 139 th but we have prisons close to collapse
due to overcrowding.

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wozniacki
Has anyone noticed that one of the most populous countries is near the bottom?

Ranked 216 !!

~~~
deletes
Maybe their justice system doesn't work very well.

~~~
mcv
Or maybe it works very well.

There are different reasons why a country might be low on the list. Maybe they
have little crime, maybe they fight crime without locking people up for long
periods of time, or maybe they lack the resources to fight crime.

If a country is high on the list, it could be they have insanely high crime,
but it could also mean that they punish much harsher than other countries, or
crime is not the primary motivation to lock people up.

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wilhil
USA NUMBER ONE!

