Like many others, I am alarmed at the rate of incarceration in the United States (Reason magazine has devoted a whole issue to the problem). I also agree that the main policy responsible for this is the infamous “war” on drugs.  However, I’d like to raise a conceptual puzzle. Surely the reason why the high rate of incarceration in the United States is wrong is because many morally innocent persons (say, drug users) are in prison.  If so, the problem is not the rate of incarceration as an aggregative phenomenon, but the individual injustice done to those persons.  For imagine that in a society with a high rate of incarceration those in prison deserved to be there. Then the high rate itself would not be objectionable, right? Or is there instead a morally optimal rate of incarceration that no society should exceed, regardless of individual blameworthiness of prison inmates? Perhaps the usual way to phrase the worry, namely “the incarceration rate in America is too high,” is wrong. It should be instead “America punishes innocent persons.”