Prisons are a for-profit industry, and filling prisons with people gets votes. There is absolutely no way that the DOJ is thinking, “I’d like to send these people to jail, but alas, there are aren’t enough jail cells.”

The sad answer is simply that prisons are a kind of security theatre. For that theatre to work, you have to appear to be imprisoning people that voters emotionally identify as threats,

Locking up street criminals, people of colour, and so forth fits in a world where the media and ruling politicians demonize them at every turn.

Locking up business executives doesn’t.

Yes, security theater...except coincidentally as we in the US massively ramped up our rate of imprisonment. our crime rate went drastically down. For those who don't remember the 70s and 80s it is understandable to wonder why so many people are in jail when there is so little crime. Oddly, removing criminals from society lowers crime in society

I do remember the 70s and 80s, and I also bothered to take enough of an interest in criminal justice to know that crime subsequently decreased in both the US and in Canada, without the rampant increase in incarceration in Canada, or anywhere else.

Oddly, repeating the sound-bites issued by "law and order" politicians does not magically persuade those of us who live outside of the conservative talk radio bubble.

See, I was going to respond to your good point in a thoughtful manner, except you had to follow up with a personal attack. This is why people with different political views can't have reasoned discussion.

You will never be as funny as Groucho.

That's your argument? There are too many corporate crooks so we shouldn't bother applying the law to them? Not even the most egregious ones?

Why bother having a justice system in the first place? Hell, why bother having a society at all...

It is not my argument, it is my dream.

Well, I upvoted you for honesty (although not, presumably, for future honesty).

There would be a boom in private prisons with golf courses attached.