this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
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World Incarceration Rates If Every U.S. State Were A Country
Interesting how it's southern states at the top eh?
Can't have anything to do with the fact that the US legally allows prisoner slavery right?
Winder what the race ratio of the prison population is.
This is the country routinely accusing other countries of having "prison camps."
Isn't that graph a bit misleading
In what way is it misleading? It seems straightforward to me.
I thought the states were being compared to other countries. Didn't look properly on the phone.
They are, and I agree it's misleading. It's implying that it's somehow shocking that the individual states of the county with the highest incarceration rate in the world also have a high incarceration rate. If it was absolute numbers, it would maybe make a point. As it is, it's stating the extremely obvious and framing it as "look, it's even worse than you thought".
Thank you that's what I meant, I just couldn't put it into words properly.
They are. Just ALL the states are significantly worse than most countries.
Yes but that doesn't really say much. We know it's bad in the US. If all German states were bad that would still only tell you that in average it's bad in Germany
Even if, I think it's still a valid comparison as it's a rate.
How is a per-capita incarceration rate, with a reference to the superset included directly on the plot, misleading? Other than including more than El Salvador for the sake of external reference, which is almost certainly a size issue.
I thought the states were being compared to other countries. Didn't look properly on the phone.
They are (which is the point) the countries are in orange USA (as an overall average) and el Salvador are the only countries that make it on to the list.
They are! The other countries are so far down on the graph they are not visible
Well yes because the US as a whole has a high number. If you added cities they would have even more in the high numbers. What's the point about that?
Because US states have populations and areas comparable to other countries. Just the US topping the charts is expected. How many states you have to get through to see other countries is interesting.
See? This makes it look like it's as misleading as I said. This is prisoners per 100.000, that means it doesn't matter how populous a state or country is. That's exactly why comparing states with countries is misleading. For every state that has a higher number than the US average there's states that have a lower number.