# Fifty new crimes a year > **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou. > > Cite as: "Fifty new crimes a year," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fifty-new-crimes-a-year/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *John Kiriakou's argument that the United States has become a carceral country by legislative accretion — fifty newly created federal crimes every year for two decades, on top of five per cent of the world's population holding twenty-five per cent of its prisoners.* - **Rate:** 50 new crimes created by Congress each year - **Duration:** The last 20 years - **US share of world population:** 5 per cent - **US share of world prisoners:** 25 per cent - **Cause Kiriakou gives:** Electoral pressure to appear tough on crime Asked what prison taught him that Langley could not, Kiriakou answers that it gave him access to a world he would otherwise never have seen — and that what he found there was a system built by accumulation. ## The scale His starting point is the standing joke that everyone in prison is innocent, which he declines to treat as a joke. "A lot of people in prison are innocent. We are the most overregulated, the most overcriminalized country in the world." [1] The supporting figures he gives are proportional: "We have 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prison population. We have the longest sentences for crimes compared to our European allies." [1] ## The mechanism The number Kiriakou returns to is legislative, and he is careful about what it counts. "Every year for the last 20 years, Congress has created 50 new crimes, not 50 new laws, 50 new crimes every year." He glosses it plainly: "That is something that was legal a year ago that is now a felony today." [2] He rejects the security justification outright. "That doesn't make us safer. It makes us weaker. We've become a carceral country is what it is." [2] ## Why it happens Kiriakou's account of the cause is electoral rather than criminological. It happens "because of the nature of our political system where in order to win votes, you have to appear to be tough on crime." [3] The method of appearing tough is the ratchet itself: "you create new crimes and you increase penalties year after year after year." He dates the pattern to the start of the modern law-and-order era — "we've been doing that since the Nixon administration." [3] ## See also - [Federal plea coercion](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/federal-plea-coercion) - [The Second Chance Act](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/second-chance-act) - [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) ## Sources 1. JAILED for Exposing CIA Secrets: John Kiriakou (2025-07-21), at 1:00:06. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q5cbp6C4CU&t=3606s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-07-21-capital-and-coast-jailed-for-exposing-cia-secrets-john-kiriakou/ 2. JAILED for Exposing CIA Secrets: John Kiriakou (2025-07-21), at 1:00:37. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q5cbp6C4CU&t=3637s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-07-21-capital-and-coast-jailed-for-exposing-cia-secrets-john-kiriakou/ 3. JAILED for Exposing CIA Secrets: John Kiriakou (2025-07-21), at 1:01:08. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q5cbp6C4CU&t=3668s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-07-21-capital-and-coast-jailed-for-exposing-cia-secrets-john-kiriakou/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fifty-new-crimes-a-year/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt