Lecture China on human rights? The USA, “incarceration nation”, holds no high moral ground.

With Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in China, human rights groups are upset that she is not taking China to task for human rights violations. But if freedom from being unnecessarily caged is a human right, then the USA holds no high moral ground to be lecturing any country. For the USA imprisons its citizens at an astoundingly high rate, far higher than any other government on earth. Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project outlined in 2006 how the USA is the “Incarceration Nation.” The USA incarcerates 2.3 million prisoners at a (2006) rate of 738 per 100,000. For China, the rate is 118 prisoners per 100,000 people less than one sixth the rate in “the land of the free.” No other country comes close to the American rate of incarceration. Turkmenistan comes in at 489, Cuba 487. Over 61% of countries imprisoned at a rate of less than 150 per 100,000 roughly 1/5th the rate in the USA. For more detail see the King’s College of London World Prison Population List (7th ed.) by Roy Walmsley. Even though China’s is home to over a billion more people than the USA, it total prison population is far lower. Still, Chinese prison population it is second highest in the world, with over one and a half million caged prisoners. China does indeed have egregious human rights violations, some of the worst involve police executioners pumping bullets into the back of the heads of people, sometimes for mere drug possession. Young Chinese woman prepared for death on UN Anti-Drug Day - See photo at http://yourbrainonbliss.com/blog This is done in a public and festive manner on the United Nations Anti-Drug day in July. In the USA, barbarity towards those convicted of drug crimes is not in public executions. American “justice” is in burial alive in concrete and metal cells for decades, for “crimes” that were trivial before draconian War on Drugs laws. So before lecturing the Chinese about human rights, Hilary, think about hundreds of thousands of Americans arrested and imprisoned for what should not be crimes during Bill Clinton’s presidency. Free those human rights prisoners first.