I don't think anyone with actual power over the issues wants shorter prison sentences. The public loses money on prisons, but there is an industry of basically

I don't think anyone with actual power over the issues wants shorter prison sentences. The public loses money on prisons, but there is an industry of basically sucking profits off all the different things that prisoners do throughout the day, and in also taking a cut for other things like how they broker relationships like which healthcare providers get paid, etc. They take orders-of-magnitude too high profits on moving money, making phone calls, video calls, ordering books and stuff, mailing packages, buying some ramen noodles, privileging someone with an ankle bracelet, or charging rent at a halfway house (they own those too), or just the slave or near-slave labor wages for doing a job, etc. And the states get stuff like free firefighters, as we all know. A privileged minority is gaining all the real estate for the new prisons, offices, halfway houses, too. They want to keep doing what they are doing. And it's not just the private prison industry or anything it's just the whole thing is this bloodsucking. It is corrupt extraction of human ability and based on suffering, it is just not tracked closely. People do time for the worst things. Using drugs is not a real crime worthy of punishment, for example, but people just sit and sit and work and work for really dumb stuff like that. Justice system seems clearly not some rehabilitative thing where people involved are helping in good faith. That is maybe what they imply on tv crime shows or something.