US freedom : 5% of world population, 25% of world prison inmates

Update 20 18 10 13: Fixed broken link, added graphic and links to related articles

US freedom : 5% of world population, 25% of world prison inmates

The blog entry identified by the following posits that in the US:

With our days as a manufacturing power a wistful memory and the marketing of fraudulent Wall Street “financial products” an infinitely self-replenishing source of national outrage, incarceration may soon become — by default — our leading national industry.

Pro-Libertate Blog

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Liberty and Law, not “Law and Order”

….To an extent unrivaled in the Western World, and perhaps comparable only to the People’s Republic of China, America’s prison system is populated by non-violent offenders. This is due primarily to that inexhaustible well of policy foolishness known as the “war on drugs,” of course.

Consequences of U.S. Debtors Prison Policies

Another significant element in this equation is the use of jails and penitentiaries as “debtor’s prisons” for “deadbeat dads” — divorced fathers driven into intractable financial misery by the federal child support racket.

“A parent [generally a father] whose children are taken away by a family court is only at the beginning of his troubles. The next step comes as he is summoned to court and ordered to pay as much as two-thirds or even more of his income as `child support’ to whomever has been given custody. His wages will immediately be garnished and his name will be entered on a federal register of `delinquents.’ This is even before he has had a chance to become one, though it is also likely that the order will be backdated, so he will already be delinquent as he steps out of the courtroom. If the ordered amount is high enough, and the backdating far enough, he will be an instant felon and subject to immediate arrest.”

Jails and prisons across our land bulge at the seams with men who have been sucked into this vortex. Countless others are on probation, parole, or shackled at the ankle with electronic monitoring devices….(Full Story)

See also:

• Belfort Bax on jurisprudence and men’s issues
• For some, Fathers Day is a sad and bitter occasion
• Recent history: New Dads, Old Dads
• How to turn anger to good use
• What a choice! Absconding vs. Insanity and Despair
• A father’s staggering loss
• IVF children have right to a father scrapped
• Divorce causes population decline
• How to Take the Chill Out of Demographic Winter
• Detroit documentary — Gangs, drug dealers, economic decline, bankruptcy
• Men migrate, may pick bad destination
• Breaking with liberalism