Yeah I'm not necessarily arguing in favor of tough sentencing, just trying to explain that criminals are still people and still think very, very logically. They just operate from a fact-base that's unfathomable to people who have it pretty good. Very few people wake up and say "How can I totally screw up my life today?" and think of a way, and then execute those plans to knowingly cause themselves harm.
Most of the time they just have a very different set of assumptions and givens about life.
>A person with a criminal record who understands how stacked against him/her society is
I would argue that society being stacked against convicts is not congruent with the goal of reform.
At the risk of "taking the beliefs I hold about prison and applying them universally", I'd say the U.S. criminal justice system today resembles a vindictive meat grinder that excels at taking deeply troubled people and placing them in an environment that's detrimental to their rehabilitation.
It's hard to argue in favor of tough sentencing when the correctional system effectively operates as an overflow for other failed systems—be it mental health, political, education, social welfare, or public safety.