If there is no loss of property or life, and no personal injury, there should be NO JAIL TIME. If the punishment fit the crime, then ALL financial crimes (theft, breaking and entering, embezzlement, etc) should be restitution and a financial penalty (the old book taught 4X what you stole). "Work Camps" (shudder at the historical verbiage, but we could come up with another name), for those who are recicivist offenders/scofflaws. This would get rid of a great many people who pose no physical threat to society and who are like the pathetic person who entered a fairly soft prisoner, and who will come out an enraged, hardened animal.
It is interesting that in ancient times there were no "prisons" as such. Penalties for crimes were financial restitution, public flogging, and death. That is it. It was William Penn and crowd who were responsible for changing our system from one which focused on "justice" (you break the law, you pay) to "reform" (helping the prisoner back into society). Those were the first prisons in the colonies.
AMENDMENT XIII
Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.
Note: A portion of Article IV, section 2, of the Constitution was superseded by the 13th amendment.
Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
I agree, but like the "War on Drugs" it's a big business now, and such a reform could easily be defeated politically with the simple tactic of crying, "Did you see all the crimials my opponent wants to let out of prison???"