This ties into a great many issues, including some covered in other pages here. From CPS mandating permissive and undisciplined parenting and then holding the poor disenfranchised parents responsible for the results, to the moronic and abyssmally failed War on (Some) Drugs which squanders manpower, resources, tax dollars and lives in the futile pursuit of the concept of prohibition which has never worked in the history of the world.
What needs to be done is notice what should not be a crime in the first place. All prohibition laws and 'vice' crimes fall into this category. There is no legitimacy at all to such laws, and far more harm is caused by their being criminalized than their commission would ever cause. Also one thing I would see removed are laws which are entirely arbitrary, such as speed limits on highways. On city streets there is legitimacy to such limits, But on the freeways and highways of the land such 'laws' are basically a form of revenue generation for the government. You can drive for 20 years with never an accident but a bunch of speed limit violations. People will claim that speed limit laws are required because not everyone can drive that fast safely. I would prefer to make sure the drivers are skilled rather than limiting the skilled drivers down to the lowest common denominator.
Once we have pruned out all the laws which should not be laws, I would prune out all the 'deadwood' laws from the books. Most of the time now we just pass a new law or decide to not enforce another older law. This still leaves the old laws on the books. It would make the law far more understandable to everyone if we would just keep the relevant laws on the books. Don't you agree?
Another category of 'crimes' I would like to see abolished are those which violate professional entitlements.... such as 'practicing law without a license' or 'practicing medicine without a license'. If you wish to license such professions, fine. But to tell someone that they CANNOT have a friend who is knowledgable represent them in court or provide homeopathic treatments just because they are not a member of the Bar Association or the AMA is ridiculous. There would be nothing wrong with actually licensed persons pointing out their licensed status, and as the saying goes, caveat emptor... let the buyer beware. The consumer of such services can then judge for themselves whether they wish to deal with the person or not. But these laws simply calcify professions and limit choices and raise costs unnecessarily. When will the government mandate, rather than suggest, how many brussels sprouts each adult must consume per week? Get the idea?
With the remaining laws, I would suggest we concentrate on capture and conviction, and getting that rate to as close to 100% as possible while still remaining within the framework of due process and the US Constitution. Reduce the overburdening of the court system by penalizing those who file frivolous lawsuits and make frivolous motions solely for the purpose of raising costs for the other side or for more insidious purposes. One such case is the infamous SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) suit. Another tactic I would penalize is if you are required by the court to give over information you should do so in a reasonably concise manner...not send over a copy of the National Library for them to have to sift through to find what you are required to provide them. These kinds of games merely make a mockery of the system and demean it completely.
I would also do away with all 'profiling' which is as offensive a concept as any that have come down the pike in quite a while. Even worse than 'guilt by association' this is 'guilt by paranoid assumption'! It smacks of intolerance surely, racism almost unquestionably, and constitutional violations absolutely!
Now, once a person is convicted, and assuming we have followed all the above which should have freed up some 95% of the prison cells, we should have no problem ensuring that those convicted of crimes serve meaningfully long sentences. I also feel that prisons should not be country clubs, but also they should not be slave labor camps either. I would personally do away with exercise yards, pools, rec rooms, TVs, etc. I feel prisoners should remain in their cells. They have toilets there. They can have a collapsible tub made available as well, and eat in the cell. For exercise they can have an overhead bar, run in place, do pushups, situps, etc. This would both minimize security risks and therefore costs for their incarceration, but also make it safer for the prisoners. How many prisoners are raped, assaulted, and murdered etc inside prison walls? This would do away with all that. Also it would do away to a great degree with prisons being Crime University and go a long way to having them be places most would rather AVOID... unlike now.
Also, in my humble opinion, if a person is serving a sentence that even with good behavior and parole taken into account would never see the light of freedom, there is no purpose to warehouse them and have them take up space another convict could utilize. Bump them up to death row and be done with them. They have clearly committed offenses sufficiently justifying their removal from society forever... why not be cost effective about it? (This does assume, of course, that the illegitimate laws mentioned above are not in effect.)
Politics