[mythrwy]

I'm really surprised at least several people don't believe this may be the case.

Suspecting ideology is maybe being substituted for objective reality?

The "line" is that we have so many people locked up because of unjust (racist, drugs, whatever) policies. And no doubt this is a very large component of the problem.

However, a very large number of people in prisons are dangerous or violent people who shouldn't be out in society at all and I don't think we could say their incarnation is discriminatory or unjust (although we could justifiably speak about how much of an anti pattern the current prison system.. but that's another topic).

Note: I don't say all, or even most in prisons fit this bill but many do.

I guess the point is a question. Why do we have such large number of violent and criminally minded people in the US? Do we have a larger number than China even taking into account population size differences? I bet we do.

TLDR, criminal justice system is broken in many ways, agreed. But I posit we (in the US) have a more violent and criminal population also. I think this is worth exploring rather than just parroting whatever anti-establishment line is in vogue at the moment.

[mythrwy]

Just to add, we can't blame the large prison population on drug offenses alone, although we do jail a lot of people for drugs (and should jail none IMOP) it's not the whole picture, particularly with state prisons where only about 1 in 5 people are jailed for drug offenses (Violent crimes being the biggest part of that pie).

Federal Drug incarcerations are a much higher percent, but this isn't low level users either.

When we ask, "why do we have so many people locked up?" we also should ask "why do we have so many people we need to lock up"? What the hell is our problem as a society that it's like this?

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2016.html

[Clubber]

We may, but do you really think we have the most violent people in the world? Do you think we have 7x more violent people per capita compared to #2 China?

That just doesn't add up.

[mythrwy]

http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/China/Unite...

According to this, the US vs China has:

6 times the amount of robberies per capita.

4 times the amount of murders per capita.

8 time the amount of burglaries per capita.

and...83 times the amount of assaults per capita (??) <page 2 on chart>.

It also says the US has 30% more people incarcerated than China which at ~4 times the population is indeed ~7 times the per capita incarceration rate. But given the stats above (along with our massive drug use and propensity to lock people up for that) it's not entirely unbelievable either.

I don't think the US has the most violent people in the world, no. But I do suspect the US has the most violent people among the subset of countries with the resources and framework to prosecute and pay for incarceration for that many people.

[Clubber]

I scrolled year to year on that chart, and there are a lot of gaps, and all the years I looked at only had a few data points. I went back to 1988 and couldn't find the assault stats that showed up in the summary.

I suspect it would be difficult to find an actual breakdown of crime stats in China. It would be useful to compare it with a country that is more transparent with that sort of information.

Here's a blurb from the site:

The actual crime rate in China has so far been difficult to assess and confirm. Official statistics from the Chinese government says that crime in China is significantly lower than that of more advanced nations, including and especially the United States. Official estimates say that murder rate in China, for instance, is 5 times lower than that of the US.

#3 is Russia, which I would guess to be equally difficult to get statistics on.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2...

Also, looking at the US crime stats, they are spotty as well. The assault rate you noted is from 1999, near our peak. Even with that we aren't #1 on almost all of the compared countries.

http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/profiles/United-Sta...

But some of your conclusions are right. The US incarcerates a lot for drug use, and incarcerates a lot longer for any crime. Furthermore, it's difficult to lead a normal life in the US with a record of incarceration which leads to more incarceration.

[mythrwy]

I think I read somewhere that a large number of sexual assaults (believe it was Hong Kong) go unreported. Maybe reporting is part of the difference.

I do intuitively believe the US has a higher violent crime rate but 83 times the amount of assaults per capita seems a bit much.