HAVANA, Cuba, Feb 3 (ACN) Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, Cuban foreign minister, said today on Twitter that the United States, with a larger number of prisoners than any other country (more than two million), lacks the authority to judge the penal system of other states.
Rodriguez Parrilla quoted figures from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) according to which, despite representing about 5 % of the world’s population, the U.S. has more than 20% of the world’s prison population.
According to a report published on the ACLU website, the number of imprisonments in the United States has grown at an unprecedented rate.
Over the past 30 years, the U.S. prison population has increased by 500%, and there are now 2.2 million people behind bars nationwide, the document recognized.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, as of June 2004, an estimated 7.000.083 million people under the age of 18 were in adult prisons, representing one percent of the total prison population.