Is less better? Is more safer? Who’s inside?
A Society Behind Bars
This week’s Leadership Note offers you four questions to think through.
- What does it say about a society when it incarcerates relatively many, or only a few of its citizens?
- When the “land of the free”—the society of superabundance—jails more people than any other society, more than the countries that are apparently “unfree”, does it imply those on the outside are safer and freer?
- What does it say about the culture, humanity and the state of Leadership in countries that occupy opposite ends of the situation?
- When we peek into the overflowing jails, who are these people? Are they people who don’t look like us; people who commit petty crimes or the people who are mass corrupters of the entire society?
The 15 countries with the highest prison population rate (the number of prisoners per 100,000 of the national population) are:
#1: El Salvador (1,086 / 100,000); #2: Cuba (794); #3 Rwanda (637); #4: Turkmenistan (576); #5 American Samoa (538); #6: United States (531), … #14: Thailand (391) and #15: Brazil (390).
Why a society “puts people away”, who they incarcerate, how they do it, and how they treat people once inside, is as much a reflection of those on the outside as of the inmates, I think.
Too often I look around and see people who should be on the inside looking out…
What do you think?
Regards,
Colin Donian
Karoo Founder & CEO
Influential Leadership Asks Questions!
Leadership Note # 1425 | 07.04.25
e: colind@karoo.world
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