If you compare person prison years, the U.S. is an extreme outlier. However, by prison admittances per year, we're actually not extreme at all, even compared to

If you compare person prison years, the U.S. is an extreme outlier. However, by prison admittances per year, we're actually not extreme at all, even compared to Europe. (Unsurprisingly by that metric we look alot like other Anglo countries, modulo crime rate.) IOW, what was extreme about the U.S. was the duration of jail sentences (i.e. severity), not the rate at which we used jail time for penal purposes. IOW, what was extreme about the U.S. was the duration of jail sentences (i.e. severity), not the rate at which we used jail time for penal purposes. That fallacious narrative is leading us down a perverse, equally extreme road--we're swinging from extreme amounts of jail time to no jail time. Are you able to cite this? Per the World Prison Brief the US leads the way in incarceration rate, so I'm not sure how to square that with your claims.[1] Per the World Prison Brief: - The Highest in Europe on that chart is Turkey, at just over half of the US rate (368 vs 629 per 100k). - It's not clear what "Anglo country" is referring to specifically but if we look at CANZUK for comparison, we can see the next highest rate of the entire group is Australia at 165. I'm not sure how that's comparable. You mention modulo Crime rate but for example Canada has more total crimes per 1000[2] than the US, just less violent crime. It's not as easy as an off the cuff answer because there are so many different cultural factors even between former British colonies in regards to laws that the data will generally skew wildly. [1] https://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison_population_rate?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All https://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison_popul... [2] https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Canada/United-States/Crime https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Canada/Uni...