The Corporate American Prison System. We are not free.

[Kaneman]

The United States of America has an incarceration rate of 743 per 100,000 of national population (as of 2009), the highest in the world. In comparison, Russia has the second highest 577 per 100,000, Canada has 117 per 100,000, and China has 120 per 100,000.[3] While Americans only represent about 5 percent of the world’s population, one-quarter of the entire worlds inmates are incarcerated in the United States.
According to a US Department of Justice report published in 2006, over 7.2 million people were at that time in prison, on probation, or on parole. That means roughly 1 in every 32 Americans are held by the justice system. According to the International Centre for Prison Studies (ICPS) at King’s College London, of that 7.2 million, 2.3 million are in prison. The People's Republic of China comes in second place with 1.6 million, despite its population being over four times that of the United States.

Among the prisoners, drug offenders made up the same percentage of State prisoners in both 1997 and 2004 (21%). The percentage of Federal prisoners serving time for drug offenses declined from 63% in 1997 to 55% in 2004. In the twenty-five years since the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, the United States penal population rose from around 300,000 to more than two million. Between 1986 and 1991, African-American's women's incarceration in state prisons for drug offenses increased by 828 percent.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarce...ed_States#Cost

Cost


U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. To view the data:
In 2006, $68,747,203,000 was spent on corrections. "The average annual operating cost per state inmate in 2001 was $22,650, or $62.05 per day; among facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, it was $22,632 per inmate, or $62.01 per day."

Housing the approximately 500,000 people in jail awaiting trial who cannot afford bail costs $9 billion a year. Most jail inmates are petty, nonviolent offenders. Twenty years ago most nonviolent defendants were released on their own recognizance (trusted to show up at trial). Now most are given bail, and most pay a bail bondsman to afford it.[65] 62% of local jail inmates are awaiting trial.

To ease jail overcrowding over 10 counties every year consider building new jails. As an example Lubbock County, Texas has decided to build a $110 million megajail to ease jail overcrowding. Jail costs an average of $60 a day nationally.In Broward County, Florida supervised pretrial release costs about $7 a day per person while jail costs $115 a day. The jail system costs a quarter of every county tax dollar in Broward County, and is the single largest expense to the county taxpayer.