What Do America’s Prisons and Hospitals Have in Common?
Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart You may not think that the subjects of America’s prisons and our nation’s hospitals have anything in common. You would be mostly correct. However, the one thing they share is how they affect our nation’s economy. I begin with one of our country’s biggest problems: incarceration. Currently, there are about two million men and women in our prisons and jails. The statistics, which are of far greater importance, are very disturbing. America has a little more than 4% of the world’s population, and 20-25 percent of all men and women incarcerated in the world. Even more disturbing is the recidivism rate, which is far greater than any other nation in the world. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reports that 66% of released state prisoners were rearrested within three years, and a staggering 82% were arrested at least once during a ten-year follow-up. There is only one reason for this tragic fact. Our nation’s prisons are designed to punish convicted criminals, not ...