[TelmoMenezes]

We could make all sorts of assumptions and appeals to common sense, but we would be wasting our time because we have statistics.

The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, the largest prison population in the world and a much higher violent crime rate than the vast majority of western countries. Objectively, the justice system in the US is inferior to the European system. This is not a matter of opinion or ideology, there is strong empirical evidence.

[rayiner]

The U.S. had much more violent crime long before its current incarceration policies. At the start of the 20th century, the homicide rate was several times higher than in the UK. Meanwhile, the rise in incarceration in the last several decades lagged the rise in crime over that period by about a decade. It wasn't until 1998 that incarceration caught up to the increase in violent crime since the 1960's, though it has overshot since then.

Handy graph: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2015/09/c...

[cm2187]

The problem with these types of comparison is that you are comparing very different populations with very different cultures.

If you could compare populations like that, then for instance the idea of banning guns to reduce the number of shootings in the US would be defeated by the example of Switzerland where pretty much every man has an assault riffle at home, and where you see little to no crime, and certainly no mass shooting. But the reality is that Swiss citizens behave differently than US citizens.

[TelmoMenezes]

> The problem with these types of comparison is that you are comparing very different populations with very different cultures.

The comparison shows that it is possible to have low violent crime rates and low incarceration rates. After seeing that this is possible, I cannot understand why a country like the US would not go after these two goals. I am inclined to suspect that it has something to do with turning the prison system into a private business and the predominance of puritanism in American culture.

And let's not exaggerate the cultural differences between the US and Europe. We are talking about western democracies, stemming from the same intellectual source (the Enlightenment) and the same genetic source: the US was created by Europeans, and mostly consists to this day of people of European descent (yes, including "hispanics", as the name implies).

> the idea of banning guns to reduce the number of shootings in the US would be defeated by the example of Switzerland

The idea that banning guns is a requirement to have a peaceful society is effectively defeated by the Swiss example. It show that private gun ownership cannot be the ultimate cause of the problem.

By the way, the graph that is shown somewhere else, comparing incarceration and violent crime rates, shows no correlation between the two. A concept of "eras" has to be introduced to allow one to talk about these two metrics together.

[bzbarsky]

> the US was created by Europeans, and mostly consists to this day of people of European descent

Yes, but the statistics for violent crime in the US break down in interesting ways once you start looking at "genetic source", whatever that is. There is lots of discussion as to the _why_, of course

"Hispanics" in the US includes people of nearly pure European descent, nearly pure Amerindian descent, mixes of the two, etc. It's a pretty useless demographic category, really.

[anonymousDan]

Yes but in Switzerland they're not allowed to keep ammunition at home.