International execution rates

Comparative Execution Rates from my friend Del, a Marine Vietnam vet, statistician and a scientist. ~Bob

Here's another nice example of how well our news sources serve us.  I was doing some checking on which nations kill the most of their own citizens, and came across several articles that referred to the "Top Five" with death penalty polices.  China always heads the list, since they shoot an incredible number of people in the back of the head every week, and stopped issuing official figures because of the notoriety.  But various agencies with sources in China estimate at least 2000 people last year.  Other nations also have minimum estimates, like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea.  But of course who is right there on the list as the only Western nation with a high rate of executions?  You guessed it, it is the good old but still terrible USA.

Well, of course all the writers did was look at the number of executions, never referred to the populations of the countries.  Below is the result of a tiny bit of research my yours trule.

Nation	# executed	population in millions	rate/million
China	2000	1400	14.29
United States	28	325	0.86
Indonesia	14	261	5.4
Pakistan	326	194	16.8
Egypt	22	92	2.39
Iran	977	80	122.1
Iraq	26	38	6.84
Saudi Arabia	158	31	50.97
North Korea	100	24	41.67
Chad	10	14	7.14
Somalia	25	11	22.73

And who leads the list now?  Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Somalia, Pakistan, and China.  Who hardly rates mention?  The USA.  But people all over the world are told regularly that we are among the really murderous nations of our own people.

So much deceit, bias, manipulation, and utter irresponsibility in the media and elsewhere!

Del