Perhaps America is so free that it creates more opportunities for criminals. And because many criminals aren't that good, they get caught and thus incarcerated.
In a country that's so restrictive where you can't get a gun or drugs, then there will be a lot less people incarcerated for gun and drug crimes.
One would think a country that was, for want of a more specific term, "doing it right" would have fewer criminals.
That the US has so much incarceration per-capita suggests something ain't working, if we respect freedom on paper but have to deprive more citizens of it than any other nation.
According to National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) numbers, across all races - African Americans included - the arrest rates for violent crimes correlates with the actual amount of crime committed by that race.
That's a tricky number to tease out. One must ask how "actual amount of crime" is measured.
Oftentimes, one finds a feedback loop between arrest rate counting and instances of crime counting that means all kinds of confounding factors enter into the number (including distribution of police patrol resources and likelihood police will let an infringement off with a warning).
It's not very tricky at all. A random sampling of citizens are asked if they experienced violent crime (including instances not reported to police), and if so, to describe the offender (ethnicity being just one component).[1]
Year after year the random samples of victimization correlates with arrest rate by ethnicity.
In a country that's so restrictive where you can't get a gun or drugs, then there will be a lot less people incarcerated for gun and drug crimes.