Way Too Many People Are Getting Arrested In This Country

Photo: Nevele Otseog

Just in time for Dr. Martin Luther King day, the statistic comes out that almost 50 percent of black men in this country have been arrested (for non-traffic offenses) by the age of 23.

Further browsing finds that almost 40 percent of white men and over 40 percent of Hispanic men have also been arrested by the age of 23.

Put any ten men in a room and four or five of them have police records.

About 18 percent of women have also been arrested by age 23.

According to Time, the U.S. has 760 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. Japan has 63 per 100,000, Germany has 90, France has 96, South Korea has 97, and "crime-ridden" Britain has 153.

Many of those arrests -- half on drug charges -- take place during adolescence, after which a large chunk of the population will have records that may prevent them from getting good jobs and rising in life.

In 2012 in Brooklyn, there were 92,527 adult (age 16 and up) arrests, according to state figures. There were also 3,065 juvenile arrests in Brooklyn. The total is 95,592. That means almost four percent of Brooklyn's population got arrested just in that one year. (Though some perps may have beeen arrested several times, their numbers are probably not all that high.)

Two more statistics: States spend more on prisons than on higher education -- and it costs five times more to imprison a student than to send him to college.


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