According to prisonpolicy.org, there are "6.7 million people under correctional control, which includes not only incarceration but also probation and parole." To put this in perspective, the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, Texas, metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of 6.7 million peoples, which is the equivalency of everyone in America that is currently under correctional control; signifying the staggering amount of people that are either incarcerated, or on parole or probation, in America.
It might be one thing if the huge amount of all those that are compelled to be an unfortunate affiliate of the correctional control system was actually consistent with the amounts of those people that are part of the correctional control system of other Western nations; but America is a distinct outlier, which signifies that as in so many things, America doesn't believe that it needs to learn a thing from any other country's jurisprudence correctional and punishment systems, which thereby means, quite obviously, that the correctional control system within America is not going to get appreciably smaller anytime soon.
Because America is the richest nation that the world has ever known, of which, despite having an embarrassingly high amount of peoples that are impoverished, ill-educated, incarcerated, and disadvantaged; yet, has proven that it can still excel economically, it somehow doesn't seem to recognize that by ignoring the huge amount of peoples that are part of the correctional control system and basically pretending that they don't really exist, does not make for a stronger nation, but demonstrates its weakness.
America has a population of 327.2 million peoples and to thereby have a little over 2% of those people that are either incarcerated, on probation, or on parole, demonstrates in principle that the American jurisprudence system as currently structured and operated, does not know how to conceptualize a solution to how to best address behaviors and actions that are considered to be crimes, and thereby apparently worthy of being part of the correctional control system. First off, it goes almost without saying, that to propose that the best solution to address crime or what is perceived to be crime, is to lock away so many citizens behind bars, or to process citizens in a manner that they are seemingly forever branded and treated as something less than a citizen, is disgraceful. Rather, a country, especially a country that claims to be the bastion of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, needs to live in principle these very words.
This so signifies that the sooner that America admits to the complete and utter failure of its criminal justice system, the better this country will be. In point of fact, if America made its abiding principle, that rather than taking the easy road, and thereby putting behind bars those that are troublesome, bad, and impulsive, they would instead address the very issues that create this bad brew, then America, would have far less crime. That is to say, crime is typically committed by those that feel that they have no future, no hope and lack the tools to address such; whereas, those that believe that they have a fair future and fair hope are willing to put forth a fair effort to become something. Therefore, crime occurs from those that primarily have been locked out from the necessary accouterments of opportunity, and it is high time to replace such with the key to the liberating golden door of a fresh start.