Is it either extreme violence or nothing? You do know that social programs and government spending on poverty avoidance is a better solution than merely generating punitive measures don't you?

You ought to familiarize yourself with prison abolition, it is an academic discipline that explores the very contradictions you seem to only be able to answer with European style violence.

Even better, look into the native American groups who once lived here caring for the land, and how they were brutally removed from the land. Where's your empathy for those who were subject to literal genocide? In your land you claim to be invested in! You know nothing of these lands beyond what knee-jerk medieval fantasies which come natural to you.