Except it never answered why the DA's are sending more people to prison. That sort of begs the question, right? The best conclusion the author came up with was:

> Maybe it’s that next election they’re looking at, that they remain tough on crime because they want to become attorney general or governor. There’s no clear data on this.

which is a super weak answer. As jordigh said above, it's because prisons are now largely run for profit. Most people who were already aware of the large prison population already knew that for-profit prisons was the reason this phenomenon occurred. Honestly, this article sounds like a propaganda piece to serve as a red herring for the for-profit prison industry to keep chugging along.