Ignorance is bliss...come join me.

Is this then proof that crime in general is higher in the US than anywhere else.

Because some people think "free country" means you can do anything you want.

Disturbing statistics. May I ask where you found them?

Their prisons are far too comfortable and no where near "punishing" enough ... if every single prisoner was continuously and seriously, starved, abused, and tortured, other criminals and would be criminals would hear of it and would make changes so they could avoid prison. But the laws are too lenient, the sentences are too short and too soft, and the prisons are more luxurious than many other places on earth where good people are struggling to live legally.

They don't like criminals, rapists and murderers on the street whereas a number of other countries seem to tolerate it!

Because American people are greedy.They are used to having what they want easily. It is stuff like wanting something you don't have, wanting money, wanting someone else's life/body, or wanting something else that gets people into prison.

One reason could be is that may are put in prison for petty crimes like smoking pot,or weed.Also the prison system is now becoming privatized,and now prisoners are a commodity used for profit.Corporations build prisons,and the tax dollars pay them to house lawbreakers.Obviously the more prisoners the more the profit.It is not a government run system any more.I guess profit is king,and prisoners for profit.Since prisons are a privatized industry ,what is next,franchises like Prisons-R-Us!

Maybe because we aren't allowed to discipline our children anymore allowing for our children to grow up into spoiled adults who will do anything they want because we aren't allowed to teach them the difference.

America has a very black-and-white (not racially intended) view of the world. There are the good guys, who work hard and build not only their own but the whole country's prosperity. And there are the bad guys who commit crimes and pull the whole world down. And the way to deal with the bad guys is to slap them down - hard. Anybody who steps over the line - lock 'em up. The rest of the world takes a more nuanced view. Of course, the really bad guys need to be locked up. But most of us are not totally good - and not totally bad. So we tend to give people more second chances and non-prison sentences because we see the lesser criminals as people like us who have just strayed a bit further, and need a light correction not a major thrashing.

Well I suppose there are two standard explanations. One is that the U.S. is a crime-ridden society unlike other socioeconomically comparable countries. And our lawmakers have decided to favor policy that locks people up rather than rehabilitates them. The second explanation goes a bit further and involves the prison industry itself; jails are big business and the government is more than happy to collude with companies like Hutchinson-Whampoah (sp?) to profit off of incarcerating people. In my opinion, very few people belong in jail. Only people who are an imminent danger to others should be in jail. It is a huge waste of money that burdens taxpayers far more than the "crime" that we are told on the TV is everywhere. America is a strange land if you look closely. I don't have the figures here, but we execute people at a rate just behind China, we have no substantive rehabilitation programs for people in jail/prison. USA has a very puritanical attitude toward crime, or perhaps draconian is more accurate when compared to other so-called developed countries, i.e. those of Europe.

Site your source. How do you know these stats are true?

cuz we gangsta like that

17% of the federal prison population are illegal aliens. (Some studies say even higher.) I guess we get stuck with the world's criminals. From Newsmax.com: Citing an Urban Institute study, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies Steven Camorata noted in 2004: "Roughly 17 percent of the prison population at the federal level are illegal aliens. That's a huge number since illegal aliens only account for about 3 percent of the total population." Former California Gov. Pete Wilson places the percentage of illegal aliens in U.S. prisons even higher. In 2001, he told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly: "We had problems related to the costs of educating children who were acknowledged to be in the country illegally, healthcare costs. One in five in our prison population were illegal immigrants who had been convicted of a felony after entering the country illegally." The Federation for American Immigration Reform also turned to the Justice Department to get statistics on criminal aliens. They report: "In March 2000, Congress made public Department of Justice statistics showing that, over the previous five years, the INS had released over 35,000 criminal aliens instead of deporting them. Over 11,000 of those released went on to commit serious crimes, over 1,800 of which were violent ones [including 98 homicides, 142 sexual assaults, and 44 kidnappings]. "In 2001, thanks to a decision by the Supreme Court, the INS was forced to release into our society over 3,000 criminal aliens [who collectively had been convicted of 125 homicides, 387 sex offenses, and 772 assault charges]." Up to a third of the U.S. federal prison population is composed of non-citizens, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons statistics - but not all non-citizen prison inmates are illegal aliens. As to the "hard-working" claim, CIS notes: "The proportion of immigrant-headed households using at least one major welfare program is 24.5 percent compared to 16.3 percent for native households." Investor's Business Daily concurs: "Once [illegals] get here, they are 50 percent more likely to be on welfare than citizens."

A massive amount of the population in United States prisons comes from "petty" crimes. By that I mean primarily possession charges of drugs and similar affairs.

That statistic sounds a little high but I will give you that we have an inordinate number of criminals. The causes for this are too many to fully enumerate but some of the biggest ones are: 1)Lack of parental discipline during the formative years. This is because of lazy parenting as well as the twisted system of public schools and the interference of the government in the home (civil service etc.) 2)The revolving doors of the system. Many are repeat offenders. Because prisons are no longer seen really as a punishment, no one minds going to jail any more. 3)The definition of a crime is often much stricter in the United States than elsewhere. Some things that are freely indulged in around the world are serious crimes in the United States. 4)Freedom without morality breeds this kind of behavior. The people of the United States have greater freedom than any nation in the world. However, they also have shown and increasing dirth of common morals to temper their use (or abuse) of those freedoms and thus must have those freedoms supsended or taken entirely. <this does not happen enough or with enough severity> 5)This does not take into account the fact that most Americans would call entire populations "incarcerated." Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Libya, Vietnam, Chine (to a lesser extent) and other nations mired in Communism or militant extremism could easily be considered incarcerated. That would make the percentage: American incarcerated 25% Rest of the world: +50% maybe?