Crime and punishment
Australian issues, US issues - - Posted on January, 1 at 8:30 am by Ken L
I came across the latest stats for world prison populations the other day and was struck once again by how out-of-step the USA is with the rest of the post-industrial world. It’s one more piece of evidence suggesting that we’re overdue for a long, deep public discussion about the nature of our relationship with the USA and the strenuous efforts that are being made to reshape Australia to an American model.
With less than 5% of the global population, the USA has more than 20% of the world’s imprisoned people. Yes that’s right, of the nine million or so prisoners in the world’s gaols, two million are in the USA. The rate of imprisonment is 714 per 100,000 there, which is not just slightly or even significantly higher than in comparable countries. It’s wildy higher.
For example, the rate in England and Wales is 142 per 100,000, in Canada it’s 116 and in Australia, 117. In non-English speaking countries some of the rates are even lower: 75 in Sweden, 96 in Germany, 58 in Japan. The only nation of any size that comes even remotely close to the USA is Russia (532).
Doesn’t a social phenonemon like this scream “Hang on, there’s something not right here”? I mean it’s not as if the rate of imprisonment is associated with an impressively low crime rate - the latest figures suggest that despite all the hype about ‘zero-tolerance’ policing in the USA, crime rates are edging up again. Nor am I aware of any other positive outcomes that have been claimed to accompany rates of imprisonment that are, it’s worth restating, six times higher than Australia’s.
Many people, including our prime minister, speak openly of their wish that Australia should become more like the USA. They should not only clarify for us which bits of American society they think we should emulate, but also explain how it’s possible to cherry pick the good bits without simultaneously acquiring the nasties (like having six times as many people in gaol).
Posted in Australian issues, US issues |
January 1st, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Unfortunately we are about to see an election in NSW, which is often the trendsetter in these things. Watch out for pollies promising lengthy jail terms for people caught jaywalking, chewing gum without a licence, being under 18, and being aboriginal while on the North Shore.
The last (how many?) NSW elections have always had their Lawn Order auction.
January 1st, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Yeah all those middle-eastern thugs that Peter Debnam’s going to insist be locked up will bump up the NSW ratio a bit.
January 1st, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Frankly I’m for an increase in the prison population in Australia. Let’s see, John Winston Howard for war crimes & treason would be a good start.
January 1st, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Ken says: “With less than 5% of the global population, the USA has more than 20% of the world’s imprisoned people. Yes that’s right, of the nine million or so prisoners in the world’s gaols, two million are in the USA.”
But I say, not nearly enough Americans are in jail. Any country that comprises just 5% of the world’s population yet consumes 25% of the world’s energy, (leaving the rest of us to go whistle for it) deserves to be incarcerated. All of them.
Any country that holds the world’s record for unjustified foreign invasions of other defenceless nations should also be all sent to history’s slammer.
Any nation who swamps the world with their evil tobacco products and heart-stopping fatty junky-gunk food which is poisoning the world’s kids should also be ‘workin’ on the chain gang’. Ditto to a nation who exhibits scant regard for the global environment that we all survive under.
A country that defies the United Nations’ directives should have its leaders residing in the Big House, while a country that lies to the whole world about another possessing weapons that might threaten us all, when they didn’t, should be writing letters home to Ma and Pa from Death Row.
A nation who’s creed of survival is guns, bibles and dollars- not peace, reality and charity - deserves maximum security forever. Guns, bible and dollars must surely be the world’s most dangerous concoction, when mixed together. Worse than nitro and glycerine. Yet the USA thrives, boasts and prescribes this evil to all the world.
Gee, only 714 per 100,000 Americans are in jail? What about all their corporate crimmo’s? On Wall Street they outnumber cockroaches 10:1. How about their absurd “think tanks” who can outspin Shane Warne any time with their monstrous googlies and flippers like “Intelligent Design” instead of Darwin and evolution?
There is no ‘correctional centre” big enough to hold all of America’s felons, which is just about the entire population of a nation whose biggest industry is the pornographic industry; greater than the combined US car manufacturing and steel manufacturing industries. Porno-USA even ecclipses the US religo jugernaut in God-fearing America.
While I wonder about the 300 million handguns, machine guns and street sweepers that chatter away daily in the drive-by murder capital of the world (as they read their bibles, of course) is it still possible that maybe just one other country in the world might not swim down the same sewage pipe as them?
In suck-holing Australia’s case, I’d bet that there’s more chance of Saddam Hussein re-appearing as a gospel preacher in South Alabama than of us deciding that all those idiots should be interred forever, not just a lousy two million of them.
Otherwise, Ken asks, “Which bit of American society should we emulate?”
Certainly not the diseased bit that claims they are the ‘Land of the Free.” This preposturous and outlandish claim is breathtaking in its audacity, when battalions of America’s people are residing in super-max’s, while the rest SHOULD BE because their ultra-violent ancestors enslaved entire nations of kidnapped human cargoes, and chained them for centuries.
Instead of “In God We Trust” as America’s boast to the world on every bank note advertises, it should be “Hip, Hip, Hiprocrisy!”
So let’s change the name of America to Super-Super Max, and put them all in it.
January 1st, 2007 at 9:56 pm
It doesn’t account for the entire difference between Australia and the US, but around 500,000 of the 2million US prison population are being held for non-violent drug offences - the most common being mere possession of marijuana. Blacks and latinos are strongly overrepresented, of course, and in many states a felony conviction disqualifies you from EVER voting again.
So the prison-industrial complex does very well out of the war on drugs, and many of the millions who would speak out or vote against it have been disenfranchised. It’s hard to see a source for positive change to develop, under these circumstances.
January 2nd, 2007 at 8:41 am
Speaking of the USA and prisons, I just about gagged on my first coffee when I caught up with this bit of news:
It gets worse:
Yep, it’s an election year alright. Keep the puke bucket handy.
January 2nd, 2007 at 8:57 am
Good point from mister z - prisons are a profitable privatised industry in the US. In civilised societies they are considered a necessary evil. I’m sure Bush and by extention Howard have mates in the business. If I’m not mistaken there’s a prison franchise from the US near you in Oz. Hey, but who says governments are qualified to run prisons heh?
January 2nd, 2007 at 9:43 am
As does the military-industrial complex.
It is no coincidence that opium poppies have again become Afghanistan’s main cash crop since the Taliban was forced from power by the M-IC. Nor that the U.S., and especially the Pentagon and CIA, are all over the the very ’stans that the opium travels through to Turkey for processing into heroin.
January 3rd, 2007 at 2:03 am
I’d just like to add that the US effectively (but not deliberately) hides a chunk of their unemployment percentage in prisons. Most countries just shift a portion onto disability pensions. Think on that next time someone points to the US’s low unemployment rate.
January 4th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
And I would just like to add that locking up as many potential democrat voters as possible certainly helps in keeping the republicans in power.
In most states in the USA you lose your franchise while in jail, and in some states you lose it forever if you have been in jail - and most US prisoners are black. Disenfranchising black americans has a long and disgraceful history - this is just the modern version, all under the radar.
BTW, Howard’s recent amendment to the Electoral Act, which also went under the media radar, removes the franchise for most prisoners. This will affect many aboriginals, who are disproportionately represented in the jail population. But they mostly vote for the other side, so that’s fair.
Can Howard stoop any lower in aping the americans?
January 4th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
grace, I’m also pissed off at the new rule which closes the electoral roll as soon as an election is called. What is the justification behind that?
January 6th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
I guess Zog missed the history lesson about Australia’s eradication of aborigines–I guess they do not count as defenceless. And of course Australia’s disgraceful treatment of immigrants. I was wondering if Zog could tell me what Australia has given to the world in terms of inventions, technological breakthroughs etc–no one ever hears of this, perhaps Australians are too busy using all the tools Americans invented (PC, Internet, etc). Or maybe you are all just busy getting skin cancer at the beach.
January 7th, 2007 at 7:10 am
I think we all missed that one love :-).
January 7th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
I guess Zog missed the history lesson about Australia’s eradication of aborigines–I guess they do not count as defenceless. And of course Australia’s disgraceful treatment of immigrants. I was wondering if Zog could tell me what Australia has given to the world in terms of inventions, technological breakthroughs etc–no one ever hears of this, perhaps Australians are too busy using all the tools Americans invented (PC, Internet, etc). Or maybe you are all just busy getting skin cancer at the beach.
Or maybe you are just an appallingly ignorant and arrogant fool?
Care to back your claims with some hard evidence?
January 10th, 2007 at 7:46 am
I like Seeker. Why do you aussies always rip on America? It seems like when I go abroad, that’s all I hear about from you. Complaints, complaints, complaints. Use your energies for something more practical, like getting an education. While Australia has 20,264,082 people in its population the US has 298,444,215. Keeping this in mind, in the top ten major cities in the US, fifty per cent of native born Americans have a college degree or higher (Census Bureau). While in Australia, only around twenty-five per cent. This is even more amazing (but I admit biased)when you look at the raw numbers of educated people that the US is giving to the world compared to our Aussie friends. I admit, all of the australians that I’ve met have been extremely down to earth and charming, but you all complain so much! Every nation has ugly past issues it wants to hide; America is on stage right now. If you want to change America, become supremely educated and move to and work in Manhattan or Washington, then make your difference. Until that day, stop complaining.
January 10th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Seeker Ken & Zog, if you’re gonna dish it out then learn to take it. Our treatment of Aborigines has NOT been more humane than the treatment of Native Americans by our Anglo cousins over there. Worse, if anything. Native Americans have treaty rights denied to Aborigines; I can just see what Pauline and her millions of sympathisers would say if those people whom The Australian still calls “blacks” had special legal rights to open casinos.
Honestly Seeker, “come back to us with some hard evidence”? Do you deny that it exists or just insist that Swissmiss presents it in detail? You’re Keith Windschuttle now? We can hardly go her for overstatement (”eradication”) given the comment she was responding to.
I agree wholeheartdely that we shouldn’t be aping the American system of incarceration for profit, with the corporations involved lobbying and donating to political parties heavily (Orang, it’s the Wackenhut Corporation). Human (not American) nature means that this will inevitably lead to more people in prison.
But we are aping that system, and not because the Yanks are forcing us at gunpoint. Greed, corrupution, political decadence, the too-smart-by-half cynicism of all of us voters who put up with this crap, the fact that we’re stuffed if Wackenhut donates to both ALP & LP, the fact that putting people, just about any people in prison does indeed buy our votes, and we want more and more supermax prisons and every other type of service whilst paying less tax. The fact that the truly wealthy both here and in the US have learned to play us like violins through the media that they own.
Imagine a good Aussie Current Affair story about private prisons. It’d either be all about the cool ways in which the guards prick it out on prisoners, or the outrage of one of them having a TV in his cell. Stories about the threat this system poses to personal liberty go on ABC or SBS and no one watches them.
Blame America if you want, but fact is we’re leaping into bed in our sexiest lingerie, not being raped.
Americans are as mortal as we, and vice versa.
Swissmiss - the Hills Hoist! the rotary mower! The Stump Jump Plough! The first useful computer! A whole bunch of other shit! We tend to go for your pragmatic, applied sort of gear.
January 10th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Wine in boxes, speedway (or was that NZ?) and Granny Smith apples.
January 10th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Plus the bionic ear. And beetroot on hamburgers.