Hellfire Nation: "Americans commonly attribute their economic advantages over a lethargic and decadent Europe to the fact that free enterprise in the United States does not find itself shackled to a bloated public sector. While social welfare provision is much more restricted than in Europe, the prison statistics qualify the notion that Americans dislike big government. America has more than six million citizens in jail, on probation or on parole, with an incarceration rate, Morone notes, five times higher than other industrialised democracies. Inside America's slimline government there's clearly a big state trying to get out: 'Only an unusually muscular state could push 3 per cent of the adult population into its criminal justice system.' "