Yes, but it has grown a little too inhuman in practice in a country that's 5% of the world's population but has 25% of the world's inmates.

(Plus practices like the death penalty, private prisons, abuse of solitary confinement for long periods, down to contractors overcharging 10x for prison phone calls. One would compare that with the 3rd world, not the modern Western world).

If anything it needs more limitations to prosecution and uncertainties that work in favor of the state, not less.

I agree that sentences in the US are across the board too long but am not sure what that has to do with compelled decryption of hard drives.

The court system didn't make sentences too long. They were dragged there, kicking and screaming, by a polity that overwhelmingly demanded tough-on-crime statutes and tough-on-crime prosecutors, and passed laws to ensure that the courts complied.