What do you think prison should be like for people? Painful, scary, simple incarceration, etc? [View All]

Looking at the Roeder threads I am left wondering what many thing prison should be like for folks there.

As a former LEO my view often was "It is a place where you are locked up and kept away from society until your time is served" but at times I have wished it to be much much more for some people.

When I was 15/16 I used to write to an inmate whose info I got from a Christian magazine in the pen pals section. No idea what his crime was, and may well have been one that would repulse me (vs someone in prison for smoking pot) but I saw him simply as a person serving their time for whatever they did. Did not want him tortured, raped, etc.

There are people in prison for smoking pot, financial issues (taxes/not able to pay child support), etc - do we want prison to be a place of untold suffering or is it simply a place for people to be kept away from us while they serve their time?

Is the sentence we want to impose that of suffering and pain or just incarceration and if the latter what are the rights of inmates and are we willing to stand up for said rights even if we don't like the inmate/crime?