Here’s an eye opener for ya — courtesy of Al.Com:

Incarceration leader

By RONALD FRASER
Special to the Press-Register

Myths have a way of hiding what we don’t want to see. Americans, for example, are quick to charge third world dictators with abusive prison policies. But prison incarceration rates tell a different story.

Recent reports show that 45 of the 50 democratically elected state governments in the United States, including Alabama, imprison their citizens at a faster pace than any of the foreign governments headed by dictators.

Rulers in Libya, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, China and Pakistan made Parade magazine’s 2005 world’s worst dictators list. And the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, located in Oakland, Calif., has issued a report titled “U.S. Rates of Incarceration: A Global Perspective,” showing the incarceration rates for these five dictatorships — the number of persons in prison for every 100,000 population — ranging from a low of 57 in Pakistan to a high of 207 in Libya.

By comparison, prison policies made in Montgomery locked up 591 state citizens for every 100,000 population in 2005. In other words, Alabama imprisons its people at a rate almost three times faster than Muammar al-Qaddafi’s Libya and ten times faster than Pakistan under Gen. Pervez Musharraf. …”

(Snip!)

“… Only five states — Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Minnesota and North Dakota — have prison incarceration rates less harsh than Libya’s. All other states enforce prison policies that put dictators around the world to shame, including more than 600 inmates per 100,000 population in Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas.

The National Council on Crime and Delinquency study went on to compare prison rates in U.S. states to foreign countries with a similar population.

While New York state and Australia have about the same size populations, New York prisons hold 92,000 inmates to Australia’s 25,000. California’s 246,000 prisoners compare to Poland’s 86,000, even though each has similar populations. …”

(Snip!)

“… mandatory minimum punishments continue to keep hundreds of thousands behind bars for just using or selling tiny amounts of “illicit” substances.

In addition, about one-half of all inmates in the United States are serving time for non-violent offenses.

If prisons were only used to separate dangerous people from the rest of society, the 27,003 state prisoners in Alabama in 2005 could be drastically cut overnight. …”

Quiz Time: What was that “Most Shameful Category Of All” of which I referred to in the title of this post? Not just “incarceration“, but TYRANNY…

That’s right; that is what you call this; and you can thank the unwinnable “Global War On Drugs”, in part, for this shameful and embarrassing stat. We live in a country whose governments go out of their way to throw BILLIONS of dollars toward investigating, prosecuting, trying, and imprisoning American Citizens for willfully engaging in such “heinous acts” as pornography, prostitution and recreational drug use. As the article points out, most other countries in the world; even the most vile ones; save such resources for the people who have proven themselves to be dangerous to their fellow citizens but not in America. This is not an “Alabama” thing; it’s a national plague which should be cured ASAP, if not sooner.

In the United Police States of Amerca, the so-called “beacon of freedom and liberty to the world”, the authoritarians in charge of our government buildings; Democrats and Republicans alike; cunningly lie in wait for their chance to pounce upon the Citizens and transfer their wealth to the government(s) for so-called “infractions” which, in reality, leave no identifiable “victims” behind. The most common “victim” these authoritarian Police Staters choose to cite in their efforts to excuse THEIR heinous acts of willfully stealing the liberties and liquidatable assets of the Citizens is the so-called “victim” they like to call “Society”.

In reality, it is the Police Staters themselves who pose the largest threat to “Society” and it is THEY who should be held behind bars for violating the Constitutional (not as per “established precedent”, but AS WRITTEN by the Founding Fathers) Civil Liberties of these TRUE “victims”. Morality “crimes”, all of the above; and they have no “bidness” being written in the first place, much less, serving as an excuse for the authoritarians to steal from, and violate the Civil Liberties of the Citizenry.

Folks, what do YOU think about a government who preys upon its Citizens, searching for any reason it can conjur up to transfer their wealth to state and/or Federal prison systems, the courts, and the pockets of the lawyers, and place a halt to their freedom and liberty for such ridiculous reasons? I think it is an embarrassment to America; a not-so-very-funny JOKE to the rest of the world. When the world’s worst dictators treat liberty and freedom with more care and respect than America Herself does, something is quite wrong with this picture, my friends.

Think… THINK… THINK…

***

Thank you to our good friend JollyRoger of Reconstitution for quoting and linking to this article -

Thanks also to our good friend Michael van der Galien of The Moderate Voice for linking into this post with the TMV Center Of Attention roundup -

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