So what really happened to cause our prisons to have so many more prisoners than before
Making marijuana legal led to the use of harder drugs.
Allowing people who have never read our Constitution, or could understand it if they could, to become citizens.
We have turned prisons from a place of punishment to a place of “rehabilitation” as if crime was a disease or a handicap rather than a choice of action. If criminals faced hard time they wouldn’t want to return and the recidivist rate would drop. It would also turn prisons into a place to fear rather than a place of higher education in crime.