Did society put people away, or did the policy-makers who have come to represent a shrinking fraction of the electorate and an increasingly strong corporate sec

Did society put people away, or did the policy-makers who have come to represent a shrinking fraction of the electorate and an increasingly strong corporate sector? If for-profit prisons lobby to maintain non-violent drug offenses and the ludicrously failed drug war, which swell prison ranks and the coffers of prison ownership, then how is it "society at large" that is to blame? Issue after issue, money is a terrible influence in our politics.