The Netherlands is closing eight prisons and cutting 1,200 prison jobs. Surely, it is because of the tough economic times, right.

Nope.

It just so happens that there is a lack of criminals in the Netherlands.

The Netherlands has a capacity for 14,000 criminals, but only 12,000 are currently incarcerated.

The Netherlands has a population of 16.5 million. The United States has 306.5 million. That makes the U.S. has population 18 1/2 times larger than the Netherlands. Naturally, that would put the U.S. prison population at about 18 1/2 times the Netherlands or 222,000, right.

Well, maybe a bit more. After all, the U.S. is a large, diverse country. So the U.S. total is 400,000? Nope. 600,000? Wrong again. 1 million? Still too low. 1.5 million? No, still too low. 2 million? No.

The U.S. has 2.3 million people incarcerated. That is 10 times the rate of the Netherlands.

Its easy to blame the diverse nature of the U.S. and easy access to guns as the cause. However, the big difference is the lax drug laws of the Netherland. Yet, the U.S. government and its propagandists continue to promote misrepresenting facts about this discrepancy. The DEA continues to promote the Dutch and other European nation’s drug policies as responsible for crime and laziness. Apparently, it is also responsible for an increase in unemployment among prison guards too.

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world — more than that of Russia, South Africa or China. Something is wrong here. Either American culture is the most violent in the world, which doesn’t say much about Americans, or the government has some wrongheaded policies. Either way, it is nothing to brag about. I prefer to believe it is government policy.

If the Netherlands needs to incarcerate only 1 out of every 1,400 of its citizens, why does the United States need to imprison 1 out of every 130 of its citizens? In tough economic times, it is about time to take a look at this.