[hnbad]

"There's more crime" is a meaingless claim unless you define what "crime" is and how you measure how much there is of it. Jaywalking is a crime in some countries. Does a country that criminalizes jaywalking have more crime than one that doesn't if it has any people jaywalking? How do you measure crime which is underreported or not enforced consistently?

If the US has a higher incarceration rate it's extremely likely that it has "more crime" because incarceration is supposed to be a punishment for doing crimes. The question is how the definition of those crimes compares to other countries. E.g. do you consider possession of cannabis a crime because it is illegal on a federal level? Former US President Bill Clinton used cannabis before it was legalized in any US state, so was that a crime?

For a real world case of this nebulous concept of "crime" as an opaque quantity consider immigration: even if they commit fewer violent crimes, it's still entirely possible for an immigrant to be more prone to crime simply because they are subject to additional legal requirements citizens aren't and failing to comply with any of them may qualify as a criminal offense. Just by their legal status they are able to commit an entire category of crimes others can't. Whether you think that is justified or not, they can literally be criminals for behaving exactly the same way as a non-criminal citizen would.