America/LA Prison Population. Explain these numbers in as non-partisan way as possible

Louisiana got alot of crooks?

Dey be racist

More culcha in Louisiana

Don’t care. We still won the championship.

Iceland’s entire population is 364k. So the entire country has less than 140 people in prison?

In Icelandic prisons, the cells are open and inmates do the weekly food shop

We started cracking down on the possession of plants.

History will look back on the WoD like we do prohibition. Insanity in what's supposed to be a free country.

Big, corrupt governments, even (and especially) state* governments, who pass more and more and more laws...year after year after year= easier to get inda club.

Year in and year out Mississippi might have LA beat on the fat people and heart disease, but if there's one governing body that I think of when I think "corrupt governing bodies," it's Louisiana.

And I say that as a fan of the people of that state.

The problem is not the goddamn police, people, the problem is the police STATE!

*ETA: (and especially) state AND EVEN MORE ESPECIALLY, LOCAL governments

We started locking people up for decades for non violent drug offenses. We seem to think we can arrest our way out of our problems. Other countries take a more harm reduction approach, which means accepting that people will use drugs and making an informed decision on how to best minimize the negative consequences of the drug use. That could mean treatment for addicts instead of prison. Or it might mean decriminalizing certain drugs. It might mean decriminalizing prostitution. We don’t do that. That’s the long answer.

The short answer is that we don’t give a shite about the poor people who are disproportionately hosed by the current system. And they don’t vote, so that means that they have to voice. What I don’t understand is why we don’t look at the financial costs of incarceration (50k a year in some states) and collectively decide that is an inefficient use of taxpayer dollars.