I don't think you can decouple the process of incarceration and the number of people incarcerated. If a functional penal system actually helps to curb society'

I don't think you can decouple the process of incarceration and the number of people incarcerated. If a functional penal system actually helps to curb society's fundamental problems rather than simply concentrating the undesirables, there's a feedback loop that affects the number of people incarcerated. In other words: fix the problem, don't just push it away.