There are countries without for-profit prisons where people are locked up for non-violent drug offences. To me, it seems important for the severity of punishme

There are countries without for-profit prisons where people are locked up for non-violent drug offences. To me, it seems important for the severity of punishment to reflect the severity of the crime (where severity is some function of outcome & intent). Clearly locking people up for smoking pot or snorting coke is pointless. Locking people up for victimless crimes in general seems strange. I think the idea is for these punishments to serve as course-correcting examples for the rest of society. But I'm having a hard time imaging a society that defines its mores based on how much jail time a given behaviour might incur. At least I can't imagine it being a good thing. If we want to reduce harm from drugs, we should work on reducing harm from drugs, instead of blindly banning all drugs and locking people up. But it seems that we, as a society, don't want to tackle the harder problem.