Like Singapore, China has had a long history of capital punishment as a legal penalty for murder and drug trafficking, though unlike Singapore, China uses lethal injection or a gunshot.
China executes more prisoners than any other country each year, in part because it has such a large population. This video features the steps China has taken to combat drug abuse in China with the death penalty.
One of the most shameful aspects of prisons in the U.S. is that we incarcerate a far higher proportion of our population than any other country, six times more than the average in Europe, as illustrated in the chart below. We have 2.2 million in prison or jail...
In previous blogs I have talked about the importance of reducing costs in the prison system by reducing incarcerations and reducing recidivism. Here I want to provide a list of suggestions on how to reduce admissions and safely increase releases, including some...
Given that recidivism is a major source of crime and is one result of over-incarceration, the question becomes — what to do to reduce recidivism? There are several approaches that have been found to work, and I’ll describe them briefly here, followed by my...
Reducing recidivism is a key way to both reduce crime and costs, so any strategies to reduce recidivism, even if more costly in the near term, can be much more cost effective in the long term. It’s a subject I discuss at length in The Costly U.S. Prison System....
In my book: The Costly U.S. Prison System, I describe how the U.S. prison system costs billions more than necessary because of the high incarceration rate and long prison terms for non-violent offenders. Unfortunately, this tendency of a convicted criminal to return...
