Mass Incarceration is truly one of those things I can't think too much about or I just feel an unrelenting hopelessness and rage. It seems absolutely diabolical to me that in the United States we have simply taken away the humanity of so many people (with absolutely egregious racial and class disparities) in the name of keeping "us" "safer". Not only is it an absolute failure from a moral perspective, it doesn't work from any pragmatic perspective either. Costs are high, recidivism is shocking, and prisons seem to be designed to absolutely foster the worst parts of the human-animals locked in cages.
I don't think there's an easy answer. From a systemic perspective we are locked into a socio-political ratchet. It is far easier to argue for harsher treatment for "criminals", with zero political downside, than to argue the opposite. As long as prison seems to be something that happens to other people: darker, poorer, less educated, there is an empathic gap that exists that makes it hard for the average schmo just trying to get by with his 60 hours a week of work to care very much.
I can only hope that someday we'll look back on the fact that the United States had the second highest incarceration rate in the entire world as an absolute black mark, right up there with slavery and genocide, or colonialism.