I must admit I haven't ever thought about these numbers but it strikes me as insanely high. How can this be explained? Is it a feature of just America or is it reproducible in other countries as well?
"... that almost a third of men [in Britain] have a criminal conviction by the age of 30, according to the Home Office. Research on men born in 1953 showed that about 30 per cent had clocked up a standard list offence - one that is dealt with by the courts but excludes minor motoring offences - by their thirtieth birthday. Research in Scotland points in the same direction, suggesting that about 25 per cent of men have a record by age 24."
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2002/apr/14/workandcareers...
The parent is confusing criminal record with incarceration duration. The UK has nearly just as high of a criminal record ratio among adult men for example. The difference is the US assigns far longer incarceration times for the same crime vs the UK. Further, Europe as a whole has a higher crime rate than the US does. [1]
70 million jobs has plenty of room for international expansion accordingly.
"[2011] Contrary to common perceptions, today both property and violent crimes (with the exception of homicides) are more widespread in Europe than in the United States, while the opposite was true thirty years ago. We label this fact as the ‘reversal of misfortunes’."
[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1889952
The net cast by law enforcement has not gotten smaller since then.
if i'm reading that right, they're suggesting that European incarceration policies/rates/sentences (or something) are too lenient (?). so, Europe has the opposite problem when compared to the US?
Keep in mind that the exploding US prison population started in the 1990s; 'thirty years ago' is before this happened.