Policy.Mic: Sweden’s remarkable prison system has done what the US won’t even consider
The darkest manifestation of American exceptionalism may be its prison system.
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world: It has only 5% of the world’s population, but one-quarter of its prisoners. U.S. prisons are dangerously overcrowded, house 10 times as many mentally ill individuals as state hospitals, keep people locked up for unfathomably long periods of time, are plagued by inmate abuse and hold a far greater percentage of the country’s black population than South Africa did under apartheid. Nearly two-thirds of the inmates released every year return to prison; crippling discrimination in employment and housing encumbers the ones who manage to function. This is all to say that if you are convicted of an imprisonable crime in the U.S., you generally get shown little mercy. Full Story >>>
