Reply #24: I'm Open to Viable Alternatives [View All]

Prisons have always been about punishment. In an idealized system, the least punishment exacted was deprivation of liberty, removal from general society, and life in generally less than luxurious conditions.

My personal view is that only a small percentage of a prison's violent offender population is interested in or capable of rehab, and that the most violent incarcerated offenders are those who might have otherwise received the death penalty for their crimes on the outside, if the justice system weren't decades into its erosion in favor of the restoring/protecting the offender vs. restoring/protecting the victim.

We're compounding the problem by imprisoning smaller-time or non-violent offenders with the violent, teaching them jungle survival skills, and getting them confused with the truly irredeemable. This is where we need to focus the rehabilitation efforts.

If I had a loved one taken from me violently, I wouldn't waste a moment of my time in sympathy for the guilty party (the guilty party's family, perhaps) and what they'd face in a violent prison population. While I would ultimately cringe from "sadistic pleasures," being enacted, the tortures of the damned would surely cross my mind. At minimum, I'd demand that the society in which I live agreed with me that taking my loved one's life was totally unacceptable. Giving the offender another chance when my loved one had none wouldn't quite do it.