Where Are 1 % Of Americans?

[asiaboy]

Find out the scandalous facts here: http://bit.ly/q6liqu

[rawTOP]

Actually the incarceration rate is now 0.75%

At year-end 2009 it was 743 adults incarcerated per 100,000 population
Source

I live in New York - upper Manhattan. While the incarceration rate was far lower in the '70s and '80s, at that time my current neighborhood (Washington Heights) was the capital for drug distribution for pretty much the entire Northeast US. And the neighborhood I'm moving to at the end of the year (Central Harlem) was a burned out mess where drug dealers once told the mayor to get off their corner 'cause he was ruining their business. The townhouse we're renovating was an honest-to-god crack house where the police once found an unsocialized child living in a closet, and the our block was known as "body block" because so many people died there.

I'm sorry, but things are better now and the reason they're better is law enforcement. Yes, the NYPD goes too far sometimes, but on the whole they're doing a great job. And we've accomplished that with an incarceration rate of 0.3% (298/100,000) - less than half of Texas' incarceration rate.

When the riots happened in the UK recently a reporter asked our mayor if he was worried about something similar happening here. His answer was quick and to the point - "Stuff like that doesn't happen here."

Here's a pic taken in 1988 8 blocks from our new place... I have no interest in seeing Harlem go back to that. It was a very dark time.