You’re assuming, I think, that nonviolent criminals always know that what they’re doing is illegal. I would not be entirely surprised to learn that I had committed a nonviolent crime in the past week or two. Commission of some crimes does not necessarily mean that someone is a “bad person”, does it? If you pick up a wild bird’s feather in your yard, does that make you bad? It’s a crime, after all. Have you ever lied? (Really, NEVER? That would make you decidedly odd.) But when Martha Stewart went to prison – for lying to an FBI agent – did that mean that she was a “bad person” for the lie? I can agree that she might be unlikable for any number of reasons, and maybe she was lying about something even worse that she had done… but she went to prison “for lying”. I’ve lied; I hope I never meet another FBI agent with an agenda. (I used to coach soccer with one, and I liked him, but we were on the same side there.) The fact is that we have enough laws on the books – for nonviolent offenses – that ANYONE can be prosecuted for any number of reasons by someone (or a party of someones) with the means and the agenda to do that. Does anyone not yet understand that this is the only reason that Hillary Clinton has NOT yet been prosecuted for her obvious crimes? Because if the Trump administration prosecutes her then there is a 100% certainty that – no matter what else he does in his administration – he would spend the rest of his life in jail, too. (This is why the Civil War was settled without mass executions, by the way – and that was a violent conflict, as I recall.)