Open System for Geniuses - by Chronostalker

USA is going downhill faster and faster. Reuters brings the most alarming news today: USA is telling the world what “freedom” means when interpreted

Last Update: Monday, April 25, 2005. 9:40am (AEST)
US incarceration rate climbs

The US penal system, the world’s largest, maintained its steady growth in 2004,
the US Department of Justice reported.

The latest official half-yearly figures found the nation’s prison and jail
population at 2,131,180 in the middle of last year, an increase of 2.3 per cent
over 2003.

The United States has incarcerated 726 people per 100,000 of its population,
seven to 10 times as many as most other democracies.

The rate for England is 142 per 100,000, for France 91 and for Japan 58.

The figures issued by the department’s statistical unit showed that 12.6 per
cent of black males in their late 20s were behind bars.

The comparable rate for Hispanic males was 3.6 per cent and for whites 1.7 per
cent.

“Unless we promote alternatives to prison, the nation will continue to lead the
world in imprisonment,” said Jason Ziedenberg, executive director of the Justice
Policy Institute, a think-tank that studies prison issues.

According to the Justice Department, violent crime in the United States fell by
over 33 per cent from 1994 to 2003 and property crimes fell by 23 per cent.

Yet the prison population has continued to climb, increasing an annual average
of 3.5 per cent since 1995, partly due to high recidivism.

Within three years of their release, two of every three prisoners are back
behind bars.

Criminologists attribute the growth in the prison population to “get tough on
crime” policies that have subjected hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug
and property offenders to long mandatory sentences.

“We have to be concerned about an overloaded system which sentences many
offenders quickly and is not doing a good job of sorting out people who should
be incarcerated from people for whom other responses would produce better, less
expensive results,” said Malcolm Young, executive director of the Sentencing
Project, a Washington think-tank.

The rise in the prison population varies by state.

Since 1998, 12 states experienced stable or declining incarceration rates but
crime rates in those states declined at the same rate as in the other 38.

Texas, with 704 per 100,000 people in state prisons, incarcerates almost seven
times as many as Maine, at 149 per 100,000.

It costs around $22,000 to lock up one person for a year.

The United States spends about $57 billion annually on its prison and jail
system.

Women remain the fastest-growing segment of the prison population, increasing by
2.9 per cent over the year to over 103,000.

In 1980, the United States imprisoned 12,000 women.

In addition, the United States jails around 283,000 people with serious mental
illnesses and almost 92,000 foreigners.

This country is bringing the world to destruction. In science the situation is deteriorating as well, though not with the same speed. Not yet. A quote from Peter Woit blog:

Peter, it looks like there are two seperate issues here:

1) Emminent scientists with proven track records are attempting to think deeply about speculative ideas which appear completely crazy to others. Some, like Weinberg, even had the temerity to make an experimental prediction based on anthropic reasoning. Others, like Arkani-Hamed and Dimopolous, are continuing this ridiculous trend, making assumptions and following the reasoning through to extract experimental predictions from fine-tuning scenarios.

This abandonment of science from some of its leading stars is appalling. People simply shouldn’t consider these ideas as it’s obvious that they’re wrong and won’t lead anywhere.

2) Other leading scientists, like Dyson and Vilenkin, are receiving money from templeton, an organisation which clearly has an agenda that many of us disagree with. While there’s no suggestion that templeton is dictating the research of these people, it’s disgusting that they would accept the money, especially in the current climate where the DOE are showering departments with funds.