You shouldn't forget about how different races, ethnic groups, and cultures - and how those differences throughout history may affect criminality or poverty. Hispanic and black people are incarcerated at approximately 2 and 6 times the rate of white people respectively[1] in the United States.
White Americans are substantially more likely to be incarcerated than Western Europeans, but not as substantially as the non-race differentiated number might suggest. White Americans are incarcerated at a rate similar to Russia.
I can't speak to the drug war in Europe, or if it exists, but it is a likely culprit for a large number of American incarcerations. 1.3 million arrests a year are for "possession only"[2] and the number of Americans in prison takes off late 80's early 90's as the drug war is ramping up [3].
My understanding of the American incarceration system, and this is mostly just my synthesized view from reading and thinking about it, I can't easily source this anywhere - is that there was a lot of crime in the late 80's and early 90's, especially in major cities. People realized that basically all violent crime is committed by relatively young men. So - they devised a system where a significant number of problematic young men (1 in 9 men [3]) are locked away for a period of time.
White Americans are substantially more likely to be incarcerated than Western Europeans, but not as substantially as the non-race differentiated number might suggest. White Americans are incarcerated at a rate similar to Russia.
I can't speak to the drug war in Europe, or if it exists, but it is a likely culprit for a large number of American incarcerations. 1.3 million arrests a year are for "possession only"[2] and the number of Americans in prison takes off late 80's early 90's as the drug war is ramping up [3].
My understanding of the American incarceration system, and this is mostly just my synthesized view from reading and thinking about it, I can't easily source this anywhere - is that there was a lot of crime in the late 80's and early 90's, especially in major cities. People realized that basically all violent crime is committed by relatively young men. So - they devised a system where a significant number of problematic young men (1 in 9 men [3]) are locked away for a period of time.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St... (Under "Ethnicity" heading)
2 - http://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/drug-war-statistics
3 - https://www.sentencingproject.org/criminal-justice-facts/