"One of Richard Nixon's top advisers and a key figure in the Watergate scandal said the war on drugs was created as a political tool to fight blacks and hippies" [1]
It goes even further. By having a large (Democrat-leaning) non-white population jailed up, it reduces potential Democrat voters - in some states for life even after incarceration. The only western democracy who does that.
This has always disgusted me. Civic duty is a foundation of representative democracy and we strip that right from former felons while talking about reintegration with society with the other side of our mouth.
I was addressing the number of people in prisons specifically, not the reasons for them being there. Being a larger country and thus having more prisoners says nothing about the incarceration rate.
It's not that different.
1: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-...