You mean being charged for the crimes you are accused of? Are there countries where crimes are 'buffet style' where once you commit a bad one you might as well commit a whole bunch because the single crime covers the rest?
The post you're replying to is not talking about committing different offences. It's talking about a single event which then attract multiple charges.
And, while not quite answering what you're asking, it's useful to look at how other countries deal with multiple offences.
In England a person accused of one crime can ask for other crimes to be "taken into consideration". (TIC).
This gives them the opportunity to have a clean slate when they've served their sentence (thus supporting rehabilitation); it gives police a better detection rate; it gives victims some small amount of comfort to know that the person who offended against them has been caught.
The sentence for one offence and a bunch of TICs is longer than one offence by itself, but short than if each TIC was prosecuted as a separate offence.
There have been some problems with the system, but these tend to be vigorously investigated.
Yes and no. Lets pretend you break into a pharmacy at night. You damage the windows, perhaps went in and disabled the alarm first. You stole some goods and some drugs.
In a lot of countries, this is considered a single criminal act. You might have broken numerous laws, but you would wind up with one charge, with the others more circumstances of your guilt and punishment. You'd only get another charge if you left the place and committed a different criminal act.
In the US, however, it is quite possible for you to get charged with numerous crimes. Breaking and entering, destruction of property, some sort of hacking law (for the security system), and a drug law or two, including possession of a controlled substance (or dealing a controlled substance). All of the charges would have their own penalties and fines, though they may be part of the same criminal proceeding.
Yes, that's essentially how it works in every other country of the world. The US is very special in that the same sequence of action can be covered by ten different competing laws and you can and will be charged for ten different crimes on the basis of one and the same sequence of action. In the rest of the world, crimes are counted differently, you can be charged for several crimes at once, but prosecutors cannot stack up crimes on top of the same actions.
That's also the reason why the US has almost 25% of the world's prison population and the highest percentage of prison inmates per capita of any country in the world, with a growing tendency. People in the US are not inherently more criminal or violent than elsewhere, the US sense of justice is just very special and not shared by the rest of the world.
> That's also the reason why the US has almost 25% of the world's prison population
No it's not. The US has the world's highest prison population for two reasons you didn't list. 1) repeat offense violent crime in inner cities, which is what the majority of inmates are in for. 2) The war on drugs, which is directly and indirectly responsible for most of the crime in the first reference, to go along with the substantial prison population that is there for only drug offenses. There have been numerous studies done on the US prison population and it does not mostly consist of people in there on trumped up charges and wildly exaggerated sentences (and yes that does exist very obviously), it mostly consists of repeat violent offenders.
> with a growing tendency
Shrinking tendency in fact. The total US prison population peaked several years ago and is now declining and is set to decline dramatically over the next two decades as the war on drugs is ending. If your theory were correct, the US prison population would still be spiraling upwards at the old rate.
A third answer is the USA population is 26% of the developed world population. 319M/1200M. Outside the developed world, the criminal justice system is not quite as ... developed, and therefore criminals often end up uncaught, shot in the street by vigilantes/opposing tribe members, pay a bribe to avoid trial, executed for fairly minor crimes, shorter prison terms to save money, worse conditions in prison mean prison is often a death sentence, etc.
Look at the typical outcome WRT prison time of a felony car theft in the USA vs, I donno, Chile.
You mean being charged for the crimes you are accused of? Are there countries where crimes are 'buffet style' where once you commit a bad one you might as well commit a whole bunch because the single crime covers the rest?