Former Christian fundamentalist here. I think it’s a religious thing, actually. It’s very common in conservative religion in America to believe that there are good and evil things and people, and all you need to do is punish evil things and people. Any problems that exist are punishment from God for allowing evil instead of punishing it. Everything will be solved magically by God once you and your society are “righteous” enough (disapproving enough of evil), something which will never actually happen because this will literally just make things worse, providing more evidence of God’s wrath.

This religious belief has influences far beyond the fundamentalist religion it came from, and it really helps explain why so many right wing movements are so contradictory and hypocritical.

Everyone else is out here thinking things like “if there’s a problem, we need to figure out the solution” while a solid third or more of the American people is literally thinking that they just need to hurt the right people and God will fix it.

(Source: I grew up in the Christian right)

By rest of the world you mean Europe? Latinamerican, African and Asian jails are nightmares compared with US’s ones.