Land of the Free

While the numbers has been disturbing for at least two decades, the US prison population reached a new landmark recently: 1% of the adult population. And it's still growing. It has become a strange sort of business in some communities where prisons are big employers. One local in a small Texas town was quoted as saying "We lock up half the people and pay the other half to watch them": U.S. Imprisons One in 100 Adults, Report Finds