It's also distorted because an important detail is omitted from the headlines:
Dearborn County, Ind., which sends more people to prison per capita than nearly any other county in the United States
Per capita. Not absolute numbers.
The rural midwest is being ravaged by meth and opioid addiction and has no real prior experience with it. People find it shocking and support harsh treatment of the dealers bringing these problems to their communities. With a small population to begin with, the per-capita impact is higher.
Places like San Francisco have extensive experience with drug abuse since the sixties at least, the community is accustomed to it, and dealing small quantities is not seen as the biggest part of the problem so it's mostly dismissed, and where it is serious enough to send someone to prison, the impact on per-capita averages is much smaller.
There's another paragraph in the article which confirms that Dearborn does send more people to prison than San Francisco, not just per-capita, but even in absolute numbers. The headline seems to be accurate in that regard.
Dearborn County, Ind., which sends more people to prison per capita than nearly any other county in the United States
Per capita. Not absolute numbers.
The rural midwest is being ravaged by meth and opioid addiction and has no real prior experience with it. People find it shocking and support harsh treatment of the dealers bringing these problems to their communities. With a small population to begin with, the per-capita impact is higher.
Places like San Francisco have extensive experience with drug abuse since the sixties at least, the community is accustomed to it, and dealing small quantities is not seen as the biggest part of the problem so it's mostly dismissed, and where it is serious enough to send someone to prison, the impact on per-capita averages is much smaller.