While I am sure there are too many people in US prisons, and that the private prison industry is evil and never should have existed, comparing China and the US is not really useful in my eyes.

Seems to me like many decades of China's 20th century history paint a picture of a nation that was really one big prison? Perhaps things have changed but I'm sure that legacy of that lives on in the way people self-police themselves.

Can everyone in China travel freely within China and live wherever they want to, work where they want to? Was that always the case if it is now? I always heard they had to have internal passes, permission to travel, and that they were assigned to study programs and assigned to jobs.

Doesn't China have a system of internal exile, where offenders are sent to outlying provinces where they are kept to work hard labor on farms and in factories?

Perhaps the internal exile to a primitive, remote farm is not considered and counted in "prison" statistics? Is it?

I have a lot of questions about the comparison, which doesn't mean I approve of our prison system here.

A lot of countries have way more violence than the US, Brazil and South Africa come to mind, Mexico too, under corrupt governments perhaps criminals are not imprisoned because they buy off the law enforcement - what do you think? Sounds plausible to me.


Which countries have the highest unsolved murder rate, the lowest conviction rates for violent crimes? Maybe that would be a better comparison?