Perhaps. That would imply several times more rapists and murderers per capita than Germany (to match the 10x incarceration rate).

Still, why call it "land of the free" then? "Land of the most rapists and murderers per capita (or close)" or "Broken society" sounds more apt!

But I'm pretty sure the BS "marijuana laws" and other such incarceration reasons that wouldn't even exist in Germany, are a big part (at least until recently, not sure today) of the disparity.

> As of 2016, 2.3 million people were incarcerated in the United States, at a rate of 698 people per 100,000.

Germany is around 70 per 100000.

You were saying?

I was saying "Even if the US only incarcerated rapists and murderers"

I went looking for data to refute this, because it didn't seem right to me. But, looks like you're correct here.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics [0], among all state-level prisoners, 14.3% of them are in for murder, and 13.1% are in for rape. That's 27.4% for the combination, or about 350,000 inmates. 106 per 100,000.

If you add in Federal prisoners, the inmate count goes to ~370,000, or about 112/100k

[0] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p18.pdf (PDF, see table 13, page 21.)

Thanks for contributing the stats! I appreciate it.

Can people be counted in both categories?

No. Those stats are exclusive counts. For the most serious offense only. So inmates who raped and murdered their victim are tallied under the “murder” column.