Totally agree with your premise that non violent crime needs to be dealt with in a fashion that isn't lengthy prison sentences. Why put a kid caught with a few dime bags into a world where he is forced to join a gang in prison to ensure survival. You've now created a career criminal when that person could've been dealt with in a much more productive fashion.
The prison system should not be privatized, for-profit, in the US. These companies are guaranteed a 90% occupancy rate for constructing the prison. How are you going to keep them filled if you don't hand down ludicrous sentences?
For-profit prisons are a horrible idea, especially given that they lobby for harsher sentences and for more crimes to have mandatory minimum sentences. Private prison companies have spent many millions of dollars through lobbying and campaign donations as this article from the Washington Post in 2015 outlines.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how-for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/?utm_term=.49a09a9ef687
They aren't spending millions without an expectation of very lucrative returns on the investment.
It's all a racket.
Imprisionment for non-violent crimes should be extremely rare, and only applied to egregious situations. And yes, I agree regarding for profit prisons. They are essentially just modern slavery, supplying and buying human bodies (disproportionally black, no coincidence there) to keep shackled and make money.
Prisons are the new slave labor.