Statue of Liberty?

It took the US prison population less than 40 years to rise from 300,000 in 1972 to 2.3 million people today. America has become the undisputed global leader in the rate at which it imprisons its citizens, easily outdistancing other high incarcerators such as Russia, Iran and China. Yet, according to a report just published by the respected Pew Centre, harsher sentencing and growing prison numbers are "saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford, and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime".