US versus the rest

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America’s detention centers — rife with violence and inhumane conditions — have created a system that worsens prisoners’ mental health and perpetuates crime, even outside of their walls, prison reform advocates say. Federal investigations have revealed patterns of constitutional violations and civil rights offenses across the country that undermine the correctional system’s professed goal of rehabilitation.

In Georgia, federal officials are investigating state prisons where dozens of homicides and suicides have been reported since 2020. In Texas, the Department of Justice has launched an investigation into five juvenile facilities amid allegations of physical and sexual abuse as well as excessive use of chemical restraints and isolation. In Alabama, the DOJ’s civil rights division has filed a lawsuit against the state, saying it “fails to provide safe and sanitary conditions, and subjects prisoners to excessive force at the hands of prison staff,” violations that have led to “homicides, rapes, and serious injuries.”

The US incarceration rate has been declining for more than a decade, but the land of the free continues to lead the world in putting its residents behind bars. Black Americans are most affected, funneled into state prisons at five times the rate of white Americans. Near the nation’s peak level of incarceration in 2008, one in every nine young Black men was locked up..

The United States leads the world in incarceration. Why? - Vox

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The United States has a rate of gun violence 18 times higher than the average rich country. Does that mean it has 18 times the rate of mental disorders? Texas has almost triple the rate of gun deaths as the state of New York — yet Texas doesn’t have three times as many mentally ill people as New York. All these statistics can have the effect of deadening our sensibilities to what is going on in the United States. But let me try one last set to try to jolt us all into awareness. Every day in America, more than 200 people are wounded by guns; 120 are killed by them. Of these 120, 11 are children and teens. The leading cause of mortality among children in America is now death by a gun. 

There’s no mystery about why the U.S. has so many gun deaths

• UK culturally most comparable to the US but it has 100x less gun deaths per 100K population. Does the US have 100x the rate of mental disorders than the UK?
  
• UK (as well as Australia's) rate of gun deaths declined a lot after stricter laws were introduced after a couple of mass shootings.