That is correct. I was thinking one thing and typed another which blew apart my reply. Sorry.
That was my basic point. But I don't see why you refer to U.S. Figures as "dodgy"? First off I could understand your point if the U.S. were hiding figures, they're not. China, for example holds a lot of people in detention centers and those are not counted. So the U.S. could also hold a percentage in "detention centers" and thus make the numbers look better, since you seem to think there is a deliberate action to make our numbers look better. I disagree with that.
People who cannot make bail, are considered a flight risk or are violent are in jail. Jail (temporary) is not the same as prison.They are awaiting trail and counted as incarcerated (in the study you posted). Should we just release them back into the general population in the hopes they arrive for trial? As you have stated, since laws for crimes vary that will also affect the numbers in prisons and reflects those who are actually serving time after trial and been found guilty. But our figures do include those in jail.
Interestingly, jail and prison seems to be viewed as being the same thing over there.
We do incarcerate people over here in an extremely wasteful manner by the imprisonment of people for victimless crimes. We could reduce our prison population by 30-80% if those people were not in our prisons. I am talking about drug users (50% Federal prisons pop.) and Public Order (35%) offenses (people arrested on weapons charges, public drunkeness, illegal gambling, prostitution). I don't know what should necessarily be done about the illegal behaviour, but certainly imprisoning someone who is non-violent and really only hurting themselves is ridiculous - until of course they start other behaviour which may include a victim such as theivery to support a drug or gambling habit or violence in performing those behaviours.
But of course I would suspect that guys like Roy Walmsley write books, then he sells lots of books to people and prisons actually end up being big business for him. So without prisons, what does he write about?
Interestingly, Democratic Underground has an article or more on his thoughts. Perhaps if Democratic underground came above ground, they'd advance their agenda better. Another interesting thing to note is while Democrats love to talk about limiting government and how evil the Republicans are, they are typically the ones making all of those silly laws, rules and regulations that have to get enforced. So who is going to enforce all of those laws the Dems dream up? Big Government, the very thing they claim to want to avoid. No wonder Dems are always being accused of having pretzel logic.
In this case, what you believe is irrelevant. Although the data may be somewhat flawed because people tend not to be truthful in this situation, many women - 40% or more - report to not have been using any form of birth control when being counseled for abortion.
So if one is not using birth control and decides tohave an abortion, it would seem to follow that pregnancy is undesired. Who has the abortion: the woman. Why? Because her and the man... Where's the man? Well, he... Yeah, like a shit he just turned his back.