>It's rather difficult to do enough bad things to get a lengthy prison sentence these days

If you're white, maybe. There's still stories of some states having the book thrown at recreational drug usage.

At the state level, by far the most common reason for long sentences are violent offenses. At the federal level it is more often trafficking at distribution scale.

There are always stories, but the majority are the above. If you have a state in mind we can look at the data together.