Except the majority of the people want to be tough on crime because they have a grossly distorted view of how much crime there is and how severe it is because of the large news corporations 24/7 coverage of every violent incident.
Which re-enforces the "tough on crime" mechanism, the whole system is rigged towards incarcerating people.
I'm not sure that's really true. Here's the homicide rate in various western countries: http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5463783b6da811d8298.... Our current prison industrial complex was designed in the 1980's and 1990's, at a time when our murder rate was 5x higher per capita than in our peer countries.
Chicago, which features prominently in the news, has over 4x as many murders as London, despite the latter being a much larger city. You're much more likely to be murdered in Chicago than to die in a traffic accident,[1] while the opposite is true in most of the western world.
[1] Interestingly, you're also about 3x more likely to die in a traffic accident in the U.S. than in the U.K.
Which re-enforces the "tough on crime" mechanism, the whole system is rigged towards incarcerating people.