The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world: It
has only 5% of the world's population, but one-quarter of its prisoners.
U.S. prisons are dangerously overcrowded, house 10 times as many
mentally ill individuals as state hospitals, keep people locked up for
unfathomably long periods of time, are plagued by inmate abuse and hold
a far greater percentage of the country's black population than South
Africa did under apartheid. Nearly two-thirds of the inmates released
every year return to prison; crippling discrimination in employment and
housing encumbers the ones who manage to function. This is all to say
that if you are convicted of an imprisonable crime in the U.S., you
generally get shown little mercy.

Sweden's prison system boasts impressive numbers. As the Guardian notes,
in the past decade, the number of Swedish prisoners has dropped from
5,722 to 4,500 out of a population of 9.5 million. The country has
closed a number of prisons, and the recidivism rate is around 40%, which
is far less than in the U.S. and most European countries.

https://mic.com/articles/109138/swed...n-t#.X67cs2RRz
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Bod