That doesn't really have anything to do with the proliferation of laws. Almost all prisoners are in prison for a narrow range of offense classes: violence, the

That doesn't really have anything to do with the proliferation of laws. Almost all prisoners are in prison for a narrow range of offense classes: violence, theft, and drugs. At the federal level there's also a lot of immigration violators. The explosion in prison population is not related to an increase in the rate of arrest and conviction. It's related to a huge increase in the number of years of incarceration per offense.