Probable Cause

On page one of today’s San Francisco Chronicle, above the fold, is another article concerning California’s prisons.  If I did the math right, California’s prisons hold 7.2% of the nation’s prisoners, which currently number about 2.29 million.  (Today, with more than two-and-a-quarter million prisoners, the United States has the world’s highest documented incarceration rate. Even with its supposedly-high level of political oppression, China is number two with only 1.5 million.  The United States holds just 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s incarcerated population.)

Why so much?

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Like about a bazillion other people, I’ve often wondered why we kill people to show that killing people is wrong.

Not surprisingly, the political beliefs of those in power have a lot to do with it.  But I was a bit surprised to learn that neither the severity of the crime, nor the race of the individual, mattered as much as the level of education of the convicted individual.