The United States incarcerated its citizens at seven to eight times the rate of any other liberal democracy during the period Jason Stanley was writing his book.
Posted by Robinson's Podcast, Checked
- Sources
- 2 contradict1 support1 context
- Said
- 1 time·
- Confidence
- 55%
Robinson's PodcastSep 23, 2026
The record supports a multiple of roughly seven times for the US against Western European democracies, but the ratio is smaller against other liberal democracies and the sources give a range of 3 to 12 times depending on the comparator and year.
What was said
… So how is one of history's greatest prison societies regarded as a city on the hill, the home of liberty, and, uh, and equality? So that was kind of what I was looking at. It was the sort of way racist propaganda functioned to justify a system of mass incarceration that incarcerated its citizens at seven and eight times the rate of any other liberal democracy. So things have changed. We are now experiencing in the United States, and we have been for some time, a shift into authoritarianism, and with that, the character of propaganda changes. …
Robinson's Podcast · · from the transcriptPost →What we found
Contradicts. A 2026 study of the liberal penal regime finds the US has three to four times more prisoners than other countries in the same liberal regime, and notes Australia and Canada are only slightly below the US rate in the NAS report, so the 7-8x multiple does not hold against every liberal democracy.[1][2]
Supports. The National Academies report gives a 2012 US incarceration rate of 707 per 100,000, which it calls seven times the rate of Western European democracies (average around 100).[1]
Supports. The National Academies 2014 chapter says the US rate is 5 to 10 times higher than Western European and other liberal democracies, a range that includes the claimed 7-8x.[3]
Context. Coates, quoted by Boston Indicators, gives ratios of about seven times Canada, eight times Italy, and twelve times Sweden, showing the multiple varies by country.[4]
Context. Sources do not give a rate ratio specifically for the period Stanley wrote How Propaganda Works (2015); the 2012 data are the closest matches.[1][3]
Sources
4 sources: 1 primary, 3 not rated
- 1The Growth of INCARCERATION in the United Statesblogs.law.columbia.edu · primary source · cited for: contradicts, supports, context
- 2researchportal.helsinki.fi › en › publicationsU.S. Incarceration and Sentencing in Comparative Perspectiveresearchportal.helsinki.fi · not rated · cited for: contradicts
- 3The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes ...nationalacademies.org · not rated · cited for: supports, context
- 4When Prison is the Safety Net | Boston Indicatorsbostonindicators.org · not rated · cited for: context
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Related claims
- Jason Stanley published a 500-page book and a 350-page book on propaganda and philosophy of language while working as a public intellectual.True
- Jason Stanley's book How Propaganda Works was published in 2015.True
- Jason Stanley and David Beaver spent eight years writing the book The Politics of Language.True
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