Part of the problem is probably that in the USA you can be locked up for sneezing. It's common for normal people to have been jailed for something at some point in their lives, who would never have had any brush with the law in another developed country.
There are relationships between incarceration, poverty, and class and race struggles.
(How about the fact that something like 40% of the prison population consists of blacks? Looks like the effect of "War on Black" more than "War on Drugs".)
You can get locked up for lots of irrelevant things in every developed country. Except in most countries that is seen as a last resort, so cops aren't particularly inclined to arrest people if there is another way, and judges aren't particularly inclined to jail people.
> Unless your claim is that sneezing is classified as a "violent crime", the paper appears to refute this point.
A number of people in the US have been arrested for assault for farting on a police officer. At least one was arrested for farting not on a police officer, but for fanning the fumes from his fart towards a police officer.
Another contributor is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
There are relationships between incarceration, poverty, and class and race struggles.
(How about the fact that something like 40% of the prison population consists of blacks? Looks like the effect of "War on Black" more than "War on Drugs".)