beacon of freedom

"America has the world’s largest prison population. China, which has more than four times as many people and nobody’s idea of a lenient judiciary, comes a distant second. One in 107 American adults was behind bars in 2011—the highest rate in the world—and one in every 34 was under “correctional supervision” (either locked up or on probation or parole). A black man in America is 3.6 times more likely to be incarcerated than a black man in 1993 in South Africa, just before apartheid ended."