You have to levers to enforce law. You can get better at catching lawbreakers or punish those that are caught harder. There are studies that show that catching a higher percentage of criminals and punishing them in a timely fashion leads to lower crime than punishing those you do catch harder. Europe in general has more police officers per capita and higher conviction rates that happen more timely. The US on the other hand spends more on prisons and has her officers. I think this is partially cultural and due to how responsibilities and finance are set up between local, state and federal government in the US.

Fraud via phone or computer is harder to catch. So the US follows it's established pattern and instead of hitting efforts for law enforcement increases punishment

Europe has a similar problem of over-punishing "crimes with a computer". In many EU countries, there's no punishment for trespassing, but even accessing an open network share that you found on Shodan, looking around out of curiosity, then disconnecting, is punishable with prison time.