[extropy-chat] Futures Politics

[J. Andrew Rogers]

On 11/3/05 9:04 PM, "Matus" <matus at matus1976.com> wrote:
> 
> Ah another one of my favorite statistics.  Really Samantha, does the US
> imprison a higher percentage of it's population than Vietnam?  Burma?
> Cuba?  Saudi Arabia?  And where exactly do these statistics come from,
> their respective ministries of honorable and reliable information?


The discrepancy is in the definition of "prison".  There are still many
authoritarian countries, including ones listed above, where many/most people
not allowed to live their province or village on pain of death.  Or where
getting permission to leave requires that the government holds a family
member hostage to guarantee that you return.  There are no "prisons" or
"cells" or "guards" per se, but the country is effectively a prison.

For most modern western countries, there is a clear delineation between the
penal system and the rest of society and some nominal presumption of
innocence, and the statistics are based on these assumptions.


J. Andrew Rogers