NPR News & Notes, January 8, 2009 by Farai Chideya
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99120917
“The big difference between the United States and other developed countries is not that we have different kinds of punishments, but that we use the severe punishments much more. The imprisonment rate in the United States is five or six times the imprisonment rate in other developed countries that we like to compare ourselves to.”