I think your argument is interesting, but doesn’t make sense in the context of this article. The author is using homicide as their proxy for crime, and homicide is the prototypical example of something which is always a crime (although there’s some variation in who can get away with it and what the punishment is).
(Also while it’s true that homicide was historically not punished by prison very often, your second paragraph dances around the fact that that’s because the punishment was worse—death)
The work OP did in the update does use homicide as a proxy for crime, but still finds that the US is “an enormous outlier” in the world when comparing homicide rates with incarceration rates. We also see enormous imbalances along (socially constructed) racial lines with regard to arrest rates, convictions, and sentencing, implying that the state of our prisons has little to do with “crime rates” as such.
I think your argument is interesting, but doesn’t make sense in the context of this article. The author is using homicide as their proxy for crime, and homicide is the prototypical example of something which is always a crime (although there’s some variation in who can get away with it and what the punishment is).
(Also while it’s true that homicide was historically not punished by prison very often, your second paragraph dances around the fact that that’s because the punishment was worse—death)
The work OP did in the update does use homicide as a proxy for crime, but still finds that the US is “an enormous outlier” in the world when comparing homicide rates with incarceration rates. We also see enormous imbalances along (socially constructed) racial lines with regard to arrest rates, convictions, and sentencing, implying that the state of our prisons has little to do with “crime rates” as such.