Assuming equivalent distribution, the higher the amount of people, the higher the amount of extremely difficult cases.
Let's skim those very difficult cases off for the moment: why can't the US make better use of concepts like restorative justice and rehabilitation for the rest of the criminal justice population?
It's cheaper; it's more effective to reduce crime; it's better for the children involved; etc etc etc.
So divide the jurisdictions to where they're manageable. We already do this - each state runs their system independently, just as each EU member state does instead of having a single European prison system.
This argument of scale comes up time and time again in these type of discussions despite being totally invalid in most cases: In most instances that are up for discussion it is not necessary to build one single large system.
I can imagine a homogeneous population resulting in a lower crime rate although I have no data to back that up. I think a low crime rate makes it possible to have higher quality programs like this.