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0 pointsJohnStrange9y ago0 comments

Yes, that's essentially how it works in every other country of the world. The US is very special in that the same sequence of action can be covered by ten different competing laws and you can and will be charged for ten different crimes on the basis of one and the same sequence of action. In the rest of the world, crimes are counted differently, you can be charged for several crimes at once, but prosecutors cannot stack up crimes on top of the same actions.

That's also the reason why the US has almost 25% of the world's prison population and the highest percentage of prison inmates per capita of any country in the world, with a growing tendency. People in the US are not inherently more criminal or violent than elsewhere, the US sense of justice is just very special and not shared by the rest of the world.

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adventured9y ago· 1 in thread

> That's also the reason why the US has almost 25% of the world's prison population

No it's not. The US has the world's highest prison population for two reasons you didn't list. 1) repeat offense violent crime in inner cities, which is what the majority of inmates are in for. 2) The war on drugs, which is directly and indirectly responsible for most of the crime in the first reference, to go along with the substantial prison population that is there for only drug offenses. There have been numerous studies done on the US prison population and it does not mostly consist of people in there on trumped up charges and wildly exaggerated sentences (and yes that does exist very obviously), it mostly consists of repeat violent offenders.

> with a growing tendency

Shrinking tendency in fact. The total US prison population peaked several years ago and is now declining and is set to decline dramatically over the next two decades as the war on drugs is ending. If your theory were correct, the US prison population would still be spiraling upwards at the old rate.

VLM9y ago

A third answer is the USA population is 26% of the developed world population. 319M/1200M. Outside the developed world, the criminal justice system is not quite as ... developed, and therefore criminals often end up uncaught, shot in the street by vigilantes/opposing tribe members, pay a bribe to avoid trial, executed for fairly minor crimes, shorter prison terms to save money, worse conditions in prison mean prison is often a death sentence, etc.

Look at the typical outcome WRT prison time of a felony car theft in the USA vs, I donno, Chile.

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