Incarceration Rates

In my journal I reserached how many people are in prison in the United States. I found that more than 7 million people are incarcerated in the U.S. today. That makes around one percent of people in U.S. behind bars. I also found that the U.S. has the most people incarcerated in the entire World. Many people worry about why so many people are in prison in our country. Many worry that the reason we have so many people in prison is because our law enforcers would rather put someone behind bars than to keep possible dangerous people on the street. We use a lot of money to put people in prison. Many people think that instead of putting so many people in prison we should use that money to educate people about crime prevention. The law enforcers think that by putting more and more people in prison our crime rate will go down but it obviously doesn't work that way.

Jim Searles was an extraordinary man. He stood out to me because of his passion. When I first started to read about his love for checkers I thought it was just a little hobby he had. After reading more and more into the story I realized that he really loved checkers to the point that it was his life and passion. Checkers went back to slavery where he said historians found that slaves would play in Lousiana. I think this gave him a connection to history and he wanted to keep up a tradition. On page 114 he said he was not happy with a particular way of life so he changed it. He wanted to make the most of what he was doing. The other men took care of eachother no matter what the situation was. They would never give up on each other which was a great part of this story. "a man don't quit what he love. Love is a great thing!" (116).