I'm definitely unhappy with the US incarceration levels.

I still think that cutting wood or digging ore in Siberia (see e.g. the weather in the fine city of Norilsk) is noticeably more cruel than serving time in a US prison. A quick googling allows me to assume that forced labor as a punishment has not been used in the US since 1940s, except for rare cases in the military.

I very much hope the the US government, however crooked it might be, is not considering high incarceration level as an engine of economic growth.