Potemkin wrote:Indeed, and American society has clearly made a collective decision that it's willing to accept the huge incarceration rates it currently has, just as Soviet society had made a collective decision that it was willing to accept Stalin's purges, and German society had made a collective decision that it was willing to accept Hitler's brutal warmongering. I think it's the wrong decision, but barring invasion and occupation of the USA by a foreign power, only the American people themselves can choose to change that decision.
I don't think that collective decision was ever made (in any of those cases).
There are such a large number of factors that could contribute to the large incarceration rates it isn't a trivial task to unravel why. It may be a perfect storm of a variety of different factors:
- an unusually efficient police service (maybe the low incarcentration rates in other countries is due to criminals going uncaught).
- too many laws and regulations making too many things criminal (we already talk about the war on drugs here)
- high multi-culturalism inducing an excess of criminal behavior not found in more ethnically homogenous populations
- some administrative quirk that sees people being held temporarily where in other countries they wouldn't be. Eg, bail, parole procedures. In the US some local offences can be dodged by moving to another state consequently law enforcement officials may be more willing to imprison awaiting trial to prevent that. In another less federal nation that doesn't' happen so much.