It really is weird. Some little things are let go, but ultimately the "Land of the Free" locks more of it's own population behind bars than any other nation on Earth. A lot more. It's not even close. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...)
There are certain pockets where some drug offenses and low value shoplifting don't go as harshly punished, but others where they will destroy a person's entire life over it. Only a few states have legalized or decriminalized certain drugs. There are even states that legalized marijuana but left people behind bars who were locked up for doing what anyone outside of prison could now do freely.
Massive crimes tend to go unpunished or punished very lightly compared to minor crimes. Companies like Philips Respironics and Johnson & Johnson are literal serial killers who continued to sell products that they knew would give their customers cancer. They even tried to hide what they knew from the public so that more people would buy the dangerous products and die. Many people were involved in that, and there's no doubt about the guilt, but no one ever saw a single day behind bars for that.
Same with Purdue after they knowingly and intentionally hooked millions on deadly and addictive drugs, or the countless data breaches that go unpunished, or DuPont which managed to pollute the bodies of every last human and animal on the planet. Even the CrowdStrike incident (which resulted in multiple deaths) didn't end with a single person being punished to the extent that a person committing a minor crime would, for example, the purse snatcher who got 45 years in prison (https://www.aclu.org/news/smart-justice/extreme-sentencing)
You know, I think we (the USA) are just messed up: we don't really have as much law and order that we think we do, and while countries like France focus on reforming people earlier by coming down hard on small crimes, we don't, and so we have a lot more people in prison for heavier crimes because we don't believe in fixing problems before they start.
There are certain pockets where some drug offenses and low value shoplifting don't go as harshly punished, but others where they will destroy a person's entire life over it. Only a few states have legalized or decriminalized certain drugs. There are even states that legalized marijuana but left people behind bars who were locked up for doing what anyone outside of prison could now do freely.
Massive crimes tend to go unpunished or punished very lightly compared to minor crimes. Companies like Philips Respironics and Johnson & Johnson are literal serial killers who continued to sell products that they knew would give their customers cancer. They even tried to hide what they knew from the public so that more people would buy the dangerous products and die. Many people were involved in that, and there's no doubt about the guilt, but no one ever saw a single day behind bars for that.
Same with Purdue after they knowingly and intentionally hooked millions on deadly and addictive drugs, or the countless data breaches that go unpunished, or DuPont which managed to pollute the bodies of every last human and animal on the planet. Even the CrowdStrike incident (which resulted in multiple deaths) didn't end with a single person being punished to the extent that a person committing a minor crime would, for example, the purse snatcher who got 45 years in prison (https://www.aclu.org/news/smart-justice/extreme-sentencing)