The prison house of nations
From a Workers World newsletter
On May 27 the U.S. Justice Department issued an alarming but not surprising report. The report documents that by the middle of 2003, one out of every 75 men in the United States was incarcerated.
This amounts to a 2.9-percent increase over 2002.
The U.S. rate of imprisonment is the highest in the world.
One-quarter of all the prisoners in the world are held in the United States–at last count, over 2.1 million people.
And speaking of prisons (this should be satire but it’s unfortunately not)
A 21-year-old college student could spend years in jail on bomb threat charges after he stood silently outside a military recruitment office dressed like an Iraqi prisoner: in a black cape, hooded, wearing stereo wires hanging from his fingers. The police charged Joseph Previtera with making a bomb threat since the stereo wires resembled wires to a bomb.