The problem with the argument is not that it's not worth raising alarm about 6%. It's alarming--that number was basically 0% 20 years ago. However, the argument doesn't explain how our justice system got to be the way it is. Private prison corporations didn't create extreme minimum sentences. They came along after the fact to profit from them. The core problem is a lack of virtue in the American people. We're unsympathetic, unforgiving, and unmerciful. our lack of virtue created the system that opportunists are now profiting from.

Ironically, painting broad swaths of people with labels like "non-virtuous" is how we got extreme sentences In the first place.

It's not, in fact, growing rapidly.