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I was musing on whether the ‘land of the free’ really is more free than we are here in the UK.
OK, we’re only a semi-democracy because we have an unelected upper house of parliament and a hereditary monarch as head of state. But politics in the USA is dominated by two parties such than no others can get a look in, whereas here, small parties can hold a balance of power. In the USA the president has much more personal power than our PM and certainly more than the Queen. Throughout much of the USA capital punishment is still used and you’re permitted to carry a gun but not allowed to gamble online!
And it has the highest prison population per capita and actual than any other country including China which has 4 times the population. Approximately one in every 18 men in the United States is behind bars or being monitored.
The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population and 23.4% of the world’s prison population
About 10.4% of all black males in the United States between the ages of 25 and 29 were sentenced and in prison, compared to 2.4% of Hispanic males and 1.3% of white males
A lot of this is thought to be due to the 3 strikes and you’re out rule. In one particularly notorious case, Kevin Weber was sentenced to 26 years to life for the crime of stealing four chocolate chip cookies, previous strikes of burglary and assault with a deadly weapon
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