More than just the crime rate, the rate at which crimes are successfully prosecuted and the resources exist to enable incarceration. Some countries that have a very high crime rate [1], but have a much lower rate of incarceration than the US [2]. In these cases, the US having a higher prison population is just a consequence of the US being wealthy.

1. http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/crime-rate-by-cou...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...

> I see several comments complaining about the US incarceration rate without mentioning the US crime rate.

The former is a major cause of the latter.

> You can’t credibly assert that the US incarceration rate is too high without knowing how it compares to the crime rate.

The incarceration rate is too high, in part, because it drives the crime rate.

It's also too high because it's historically largely a product of criminal justice policies adopted as a direct replacement for chattel slavery as a tool of racial suppression and which have continued to this day with that effect, having spread beyond the region which had chattel slavery to replace to the whole nation.

This is particularly true of penal slavery.

A high crime rate is a telltale sign of a dysfunctional society, anyway. Something is rotten.

The US does not have the same class structure as most developed nations. We have 40 million black Americans who are descended from slaves and faced legal discrimination up until the mid-1960s. This population makes up a disproportionate share of our prison population. Since then, a second extremely large ethnic underclass had immigrated across the US’s southern border. This population also makes up a disproportionate share of our prison population. As far as I am aware, this is unique among developed western nations.

There's more to it than that - there's the plea bargain system, which is largely considered to be unethical elsewhere, that increases the _conviction_ rate.