ABSTRACT
According to the International Crime Victimization Survey, US victimization rates are similar to those of Canada, Switzerland, and Denmark (Lappi-Seppälä 2015; Farrington, Langan, and Tonry 2004). Yet, unlike these countries, the US has a massive and expensive incarcerated population that costs states such as New York as much as $60,000 per inmate per year (Wagner and Rabuy 2016; Henrichson and Delaney 2012). Crimes that would draw fines in Germany are punished in the US by lengthy jail and prison sentences, often under harsh conditions justified by an Anglo-American commitment to “less eligibility” (Kugler et al. 2013; Sieh 1989; Blecker 2013: 90–5). The number of persons incarcerated in the United States has risen almost every year since the early 1970s, and incarceration as a tool of crime control disparately affects minority groups. For example, African Americans report using drugs at about the same rate as whites, but African Americans are vastly over-represented in drug arrests (38% of all drug offense arrests) and in state prisons (59% of those who are serving time for a drug offense) (Turner 2014).
