More than 2.3 million adults are imprisoned in US jails, according to the Pew Report. This represents the highest US incarceration rate in history, amounting to one in every 99 adults in the US. By way of comparison, the incarceration rate in Australia is around one in every 600 adults. The Australian incarceration rate is highest in the Northern Territory at one in 168 adults, and lowest in the ACT and Victoria (one in 1,587 and one in 961 respectively, as at June 2007).
Why are ten times as many people imprisoned in the US, on average, than in Victoria? The most likely reasons seem to be that the US social system provides less support for people at the bottom of the social scale, and the US justice system takes a more punitive approach to offences, particularly minor offences. One in nine black American males aged 20 to 34 are in prison, which suggests that the US has a long way to go in order to overcome its racist past.
The word “prison” and its variants such as “prisoner” occur 71 times in the New Testament (NIV). Not a single one of these refers in an approving manner to imprisonment, other than perhaps the reference to Satan in prison in Revelation 20. Nearly all of the other occurrences refer to imprisonment as a form of persecution or to prisoners as people deserving of sympathy. For a nation claiming to have Christian heritage, the US seems to have things horribly wrong.