United States is home to 23 percent of the world’s prisoners
Here’s a question you might think is a no-brainer: Who has a higher percentage of citizens locked up behind bars – Robert Mugabe or Jon Corzine?
If you picked the bloodthirsty dictator of Zimbabwe, you’re wrong. The governor of New Jersey presides over a prison system that incarcerates people at a considerably higher rate.
In fact, there are more prison inmates per 100,000 people in New Jersey than in Zimbabwe, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and China – five of the countries that lead just about everyone’s list of ruthless dictatorships.
And the race isn’t even close. New Jersey incarcerates 313 citizens for every 100,000 residents. In Moammar Qaddafi’s Libya, the corresponding number is 207. In Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s Pakistan, it’s 57.
A cynic might suggest these numbers are skewed by the fact that, in dictatorships, people unfriendly to the regime simply disappear rather than show up in prisons. But the numbers are too glaring to be written off so glibly. The fact is, New Jersey (like most of the United States) imprisons a larger percentage of its population than virtually all civilized – and more than a few uncivilized – countries around the world. With only 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States is home to 23 percent of the world’s prisoners.
Perhaps there’s some measure of comfort in the fact that Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Louisiana put people behind bars at almost twice the rate of New Jersey. Then again, the Garden State’s total inmate population – 27,359 at last count – is about 2,000 higher than Australia’s.
Why should we care about these numbers? For one thing, prisons cost money – and lots of it. New Jersey’s annual corrections budget is now around $1 billion, and growing every year. (This doesn’t include the cost of running county jails and municipal lockups.) For another, there appears to be little, if any, correlation between the number of people locked up at any given time and the number of crimes being committed during their absence from society.
That’s probably because a large percentage of the criminals behind bars in New Jersey did not commit violent crimes. They committed crimes involving drugs. If they happened to commit these crimes anywhere in densely populated North Jersey, chances are they did so within 1,000 feet of a school. When that happens, they automatically go to state prison – no ifs, ands or buts.
The Sentencing Project in Washington, in an exhaustive study of crime statistics and incarceration rates, found that while the U.S. prison population nearly tripled between 1980 and 1996, changes in crime accounted for only 12 percent of the increase. The other 88 percent was attributable to changes in sentencing policy, primarily mandatory minimum sentences for crimes involving drugs.
That’s exactly what New Jersey has done, leading to runaway corrections costs – with virtually no impact on public safety. What would happen if the state took just a fraction of the money it spends to keep nonviolent criminals behind bars and used it instead to fund drug treatment programs? The National Council on Crime and Delinquency thinks the answer to that question is two-fold: New Jersey would save big bucks, and many nonviolent criminals would truly be rehabilitated. That strikes us as not only a sensible policy, but also a more realistic and effective strategy in the war on crime than the largely symbolic one we’re waging now.

