It’s framed as “look, if we put US states on a graph with other countries, they have such a high incarceration rate that there are almost no countries even on the graph!”

It's certainly possible that you have one big state with a high incarceration rate - Texas or California for instance - that's throwing off the national average. States are free to set their own penal process. It's not a given that every state has a globe-shattering incarceration rate.

Saying "It's not just one or two states with astronomical incarceration rates, its the whole country contributing to the total" indicates something notable about the politics and culture of the country as a whole.

Wyoming could have an incarceration rate of 0% without affecting America's position as a carceral state. That it doesn't is meaningful.

[–] LwL@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

Yes, but that doesn't make the comparison to all countries with over 500 000 people meaningful. It's specifically that part that seems dishonest to me.

Though I suppose it is also possible that the full data has a few states where incarceration rates are more around the global average, which then would actually have a point in including other countries. Those weren't part of the image posted here though (which was also dropped without context as to why it was posted)

Edit: yknow it occured to me i could click the link and yea, some states are indeed more normal, though still kinda high. That's really the interesting part far more than the top of the list.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago

Yes, but that doesn’t make the comparison to all countries with over 500 000 people meaningful.

Fair enough. Any state with less than 500k people probably shouldn't be on the list.