Comment by bandrami
6 hours ago
I'm not a big "lock them up" guy but seriously people don't seem to understand how hard it is to actually get the state to put and keep you in jail. You have to do really really bad things multiple times. The US prison population has been falling for over a decade now and part of that is everybody now faces pressure to not use incarceration as a first (or second or fifth) option
My country has a relatively high incarceration rate for a EU member, but that is in huge part due to previous governments seeing jail as a solution to everything.
Currently the prevailing notion is that prison is often just LinkedIn for criminals, so attempts at alternatives have been made - ankle monitors and the like.
I know a total of two people who were convicted - both for marijuana possession. One got a suspended sentence as the amount was small, the other did time, but looking at the case it was miscarriage of justice - partly because of a testimony of a man who met the accused just once in his life and had legal troubles of his own, from which he wanted to get out this way.
None of them really posed a threat to society that would mandate incarceration.
The USA has the biggest incarceration rate of any developed country.
If you say that it's hard to get the state to put you in jail, then the only way I can reconcile that with facts is that people in the USA commit crimes X10 times more than in other developed countries.
Do you think that's true?
Oh absolutely. The level of antisocial behavior the US tolerates compared to multiple other countries (developed and developing) I've lived in is astounding.