"Prisons are the symptom, not the disease" - not if you look at it like those that keep the current system alive and thriving. For them, each of those 4,916 facilities is a profit center renting multi-millions every year (or $Billions overall every year).

As soon as you stop allowing to turn prisons into profits with inmate occupations guaranteed by the DoJ but instead come back to a different understanding and deliver various social functions and protections of our societies in the way they are intended to be (Not for profit as a service to society that you finance / support with your taxes) this will change and together with it most likely the stop of "unnecessary arrests" as they have recently be called by the NYPD will become more permanent.

Otherwise soon the "Ministry for Information" might charge you for "information retrieval" and the cost of your execution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_%281985_film%29)