The NYT tells us that Japan is struggling to meet the cost of its aging prison population. While 4.6 percent of the prison population in the United States is over age 55, 12.3 percent of Japan's prison population is over age 60.
Before getting too concerned about how Japan can afford this burden, consider the fact that the incarceration rate in the United States is approximately 12 times as high as in Japan. This means that if the share of elderly prisoners is 4 times as great in Japan as in the United States, then the number of older prisoners relative to the population is about one-third as high in Japan as in the United States. It would have been useful to include this information in the article.
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