Does a Poor Economy Equate to Higher Rates of Incarceration?

Question by V-Starion: Does a poor economy equate to higher rates of incarceration?
One in 100 Americans are currently serving a prison sentence, why?

“2,319,258 Americans behind bars in 2008, most of any nation”

source: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.prisons29feb29,0,2057053.story

Best answer:

Answer by Soy Socialista
No it does not, if a poor economy were the reason, then you would have a higher incarceration rate in India, where poverty there is truly abject and grinding.

In fact, one of the strange things about economics and crime is that crime seems to go up when there economy is doing well … so for example, crime went up in the United states during the “roaring 20s”

The high incarceration here in the United States is universally blamed on the highly punitive drugs laws…in europe and other parts of the world, drug use is treated as a medical problem,not a criminal problem

Approximately half of the federal prisoners in the US are there for “non violent offenses” in other worlds drug use or sale…The US also has some of the most punitive laws in the industrialized world, things like “3 strikes and your out” etc…

But the main reason for the high incarceration is because we have chosen to criminalize drug use to a level not seen elsewhere

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