Prison serves, to a greater or lesser extent, 4 purposes.
1) Punishment. To me, sure. Prison would be a punishment - to your average Nomad/Mongrel/Black Power/who cares, not so much
2) Deterrence. See 1)
3) Rehabilitation. I know a psychologist who works in the prison service. It isn't great, and there aren't enough resources or people to do a worthwhile job for/on everyone. The success stories tend to be self selecting
4) Isolation from society. This one does work, but eventually (nearly) everyone gets out, and then we are all bitching about the lack of success in 3)
I used to be a fan of capital punishment, but over the years I've changed my mind. I now have a problem with handing the Government the power to do an unrecoverable act - there have been enough examples of malfeasance, bias and just incompetence that I'd rather pay for them to be put away - forever, if necessary.
For joe shithead, there really does need to be a way to get them out of the lifestyle that they live - and it isn't by doing what we currently are doing, that is for sure.
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