sunday night reading

here is an interesting essay concerning the religious impulse in the us. it doesn't come to any new conclusions or make a staggeringly new case for the hypocrisy between what we preach and what we practice, but it does provide a startling series of statistics in which, unless you've taken care to pay close attention to everything, you're likely to find something you hadn't known before. as for me, the following is among the more disturbing information.

In one area, the United States is indisputably No. 1. The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world. Currently more than 2 million people are incarcerated; and according to the most recent figures, 1 in every 31 adults is in prison, on parole or probation, adding up to a total of 7.3 million at a cost of $68 billion annually. Criminologist Shawn Bushway at the State University at Albany reports that “by age 23, almost a third of Americans have been arrested for a crime.” Our nearest competitor for the No. 1 spot is China. Although China has a far greater total population than the U.S., its prison population is half a million less than ours. Next is Russia with 846,967 imprisoned.

there are many links to author bernard starr's sources available in the original and I encourage you to visit some of them. the essay itself, prone to the problems of most blogs--lack of editing and poor word choice as well as rampant grammatical issues--is still a fine read and should experience a greater audience.