Even government run prisons have a pressure to keep head counts up. Like schools, they get 'paid' per head, and are always against budget pressures. The situat

Even government run prisons have a pressure to keep head counts up. Like schools, they get 'paid' per head, and are always against budget pressures. The situation is not any better with law enforcement and prosecutors. Nobody gets excited when an elected prosecutor says 'I put 2000 people into a diversionary program this year.' and his political opponents go pick out the fringe cases where 1 of those 2000 went on to rob a bank and kill someone, and use that as justification that all of them should have been in prison. The law enforcement officer that brags about how many people he 'put away' gets kudos and accolades, while the one that let them go stays at the bottom of the ranks. None of this will change until we as society value rehabilitation over punishment and are willing to accept the small up-front and rather short term risk of recividism in exchange for a long term benefit to society as a whole.