As you can see, the above graphic comes from Business Day, listing the number of people in prison per 100,000 inhabitants.
Besides America there at the top (SUA), all of the other countries are in the European Union. Romania is right about “average” and has roughly 23,000 people behind bars. Of these, just 133 are serving a “life” sentence.
I say “life” because in Europe (and Romania) generally this means a maximum of about 30 years. That’s still one heck of a chunk of a person’s existence on this planet though.
Unfortunately, all of those statistics are from 2009 and I was unable to find anything more recent on Romania’s INS (National Institute of Statistics) website.
I do note that just about 5% of the prisoners in the survey, whether from Romania or the other countries, are female. The remaining 95% are male.
And just because it rarely seems to be understood around here, approximately one quarter (1 in 4) of all the people behind bars worldwide are in the United States. You can read much, much more about that here. That’s why I always consider the United States to be going through some kind of civil war, a war of the state versus a sizable chunk of its population.
Indeed, if Romania were to suddenly imprison as many people as they do in America, there’d be over 128.000 prisoners in this country. Thank goodness that’s not the case.
* The title of this post comes from the word pârnaie, a kind of street slang word used to refer to prisons/jails. Consider it the equivalent in English to “slammer” or “big house” or “calaboose“.
All Things Romania 
“I don’t understand the comment about the relationship between immigrants and prisons.” Well of course you don’t! :)
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I don’t understand the comment about the relationship between immigrants and prisons. It seems to me pure speculation.
On the other hand, it is known that in the US many people with mental disorders end up in prisons (let’s not forget that “substance abuse/dependence” is considered a psychiatric disorder). Most of people with mental disorders cannot afford medical insurance. Most of the time, medication is very expensive (and is for life!) and the necessary psychotherapy is extremely expensive (at least $150 for 45 minutes of therapy).
Add the fact that it’s not easy to convince a person that he/she has mental problems. For example, under the US law, a person who suffers from schizophrenia CAN refuse medication and hospitalization. As a doctor, you cannot do anything about that, unless the patient is very violent (and still the patient can sue the doctor for malpractice). Many poor families abandon their members who suffer from psychiatric disorders because they are very difficult to deal with. Most of the homeless people in the US have a mental problem. When these people get in trouble (and they usually get in trouble), they end up in prisons.
Some facts:
http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/menbrief.html
http://psychservices.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/49/4/483
“Clinical studies suggest that 6 to 15 percent of persons in city and county jails and 10 to 15 percent of persons in state prisons have severe mental illness. Offenders with severe mental illness generally have acute and chronic mental illness and poor functioning. A large proportion are homeless. It appears that a greater proportion of mentally ill persons are arrested compared with the general population.”
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In my humble opinion I think that is because of the number of immigrants the USA has had over the years. From a total number of people that comes into a country a lot are honest, hard working folks that want to build a better life for themselves, but even more are lowlifes that want to make a quick buck. It’s just as with Romania and the EU. When the borders were opened a lot of people went west to work hard and earn some money while other scumbags went to rob banks and atms, pimp hoes, steal cars etc. because a whole new horizon of crime just opened to them
I think it’s the consequence of the massive USA branding and marketing machine that led to this. When you pride yourself publicly with your freedom and wealth and the “American Dream” you should be expecting massive waves of immigrants.
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