As someone looking in to USA society from outside - it certainly seems that at least investigating non-incarceration methods for dealing with most of your "prison population" would be worthwhile. There's a gigantic industry entirely funded by taxpayers - there's no doubt at least some of the "military industrial complex $1000 hammer" type behavior going on. That industry is legally required to "increase shareholder value", rather than minimize the cost-to-the-taxpayer.
The prison system shouldn't be about either "increasing shareholder value" or "minimizing cost-to-taxpayer". It should be about rehabilitation, justice, and public safety.
Part of the problem is that it's really hard to win an election against someone who has positioned themselves as "harder on crime" than yourself. As a result, we have legislators pushing for tougher and tougher prison sentences, mandatory sentencing, etc. I don't know how other countries deal with this pressure, but I would be eager to see the United States do better.
Your counterpoint is way off topic… What you're saying about the business of prisons here is 100% true, but you could increase prosecution (and imprisonment) of white collar fraud by 10X and the effect on the overall US prison population would be small.
