> prisons should be to rehabilitate

A lot of people, regardless of political persuasion, believe that the purpose of prisons is to punish those inside. No more, no less, and any "rehabilitation" is just something that happens alongside (and often in spite of) the real purpose.

Even if the purpose was punishment, I wonder why we harbor such a deep aversion to corporal punishment.

The (US) Constitution prohibits "cruel and unusual" punishments in sentencing, but in my mind, losing years of one's life, which one will never get back, is significantly more cruel than, say, fifty lashes.

There's a book on (roughly) this question:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish#Summary

Cruel and unusual, not cruel or unusual.

SCOTUS has said about the death penalty specifically that it is without a doubt cruel; however, it is pervasive, and therefore not an unusual punishment. Therefore there is no Constitutional violation. I suspect a similar argument in the inverse rules out corporal punishment. Fifty lashes, even if less cruel than decades in prison, is certainly a cruel punishment. It's also very unusual for 2017 America.

Prohibitions against X and Y unfortunately tend to be grammatically ambiguous. If your read it as "prohibited to do X and prohibited to do Y" rather than "prohibited to do [X and Y]", then it is equivalent to "prohibited to do [X or Y]". So for example, the statement "It is prohibited to bring fruits and vegetables across the border" would usually be taken to prohibit bringing fruits or vegetables alone.

Ok. We can argue grammatical pedantry all we want, I'm just saying what SCOTUS has said with regard to its interpretation of 8A specifically. There are three things not allowed: 1) excessive bail required; 2) excessive fines imposed; 3) cruel and unusual punishment. The application of a cruel but common punishment doesn't fit #3.

The trouble is that punishment and rehabilitation are seen as mutually exclusive. That a "soft" prison is less punishing. But really the removal of freedom in itself is a vast punishment. Going further than that is just unceccessary and counterproductive.

The problem is rehabilitation only works on some people, and punishment works on virtually no one.

Prisons are a dumping ground for people with personality disorders. You can't fix a personality disorder with rehabilitation, or with punishment. (Arguably you can't fix a personality disorder at all.)

Some people are relatively rational. They commit crimes for a variety of reasons, a good proportion of which are a direct outcome of poverty and/or economic abuse and/or racism.

The best way to rehabilitate them is to rehabilitate society so it doesn't push them into a corner, or create subcultures where crime is a reasonable survival option.

The people with psychological issues are much harder to deal with. Keeping them locked and away and occupied is more humane than trying to "punish" them, because the punishment is pointless and will have exactly zero effect.

Running prisons as a for-profit industry instead of a social service is barbarism, and ultimately just puts more criminals on the streets.

Luckily we have a lot of data.

If punishment is rehabilitating, in average, the harder the prisons the nicer the people that come from them. We could check for instance, I don't know, Russia vs. Sweden or something like that.

If we believe prisons are to act as a sort of operant conditioning for the inmates, then the punishment IS supposed the rehabilitation. However, as you probably know, many folks do not respond to this type of conditioning.

The purpose of prisons is to keep felons away from people's children.

That's not even remotely accurate. All you need to do is look at the number of people in prison who aren't felons to know that that's wrong on its face.

> prisons should be to rehabilitate

What I personally appreciate the most is the simple fact of having dangerous people confined so that the danger to others (including myself) is no longer there.

I'm not sure where you're from and prison effectiveness tends to be dramatically different throughout the world. However, where I'm from, federal penitentiaries have a first year recidivism rate of over 40% (for non indigenous males) and nearly 60% (for indigenous males). In Canada, the provincial correctional system houses people sentenced to two years less a day, so federal penitentiaries tend to house more violent criminals.

I'll agree that it's nice having them off the streets, though I hate knowing that we release people knowing that on average, over 40% for reoffend within their first year.

At least in the US, that results in the dangerous people you mentioned being confined with lots of people with undiagnosed or untreated mental problems and lots of nonviolent (non-dangerous) offenders. On top of that, you have a significant number of innocent people incarcerated also, people who got screwed by the system along the way.

When we place all those people together, in a setting where violent assaults are shockingly common -- and, in particular, the constant threat of rape -- we are definitely making you less safe, not more safe. One might argue that at least the "dangerous people" are preying on other "criminals" while they are inside, but how many of those victims end up becoming MORE dangerous to you and your family due to years of state-supervised abuse?

The vast majority of people in prison are not dangerous (and, in my view at least, don't belong there), at least in the US.

You are completely correct. I'd also add that even if we assume everyone IS dangerous, would you really want to lock them away for 5, 10, 15 years without any thought as to what sort of human they'd be after that? My personal opinion is that we should treat these people humanely and with sympathy, but if GP is taking an extreme self-centered approach then why not consider the possibility that the system is creating people who are more dangerous to them in the long run?

>The vast majority of people in prison are not dangerous

Why do you think this?

I found a source for inmate stats: https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...

It's hard to precisely quantify the violent versus non-violent crimes, so I'll be making some assumptions in my summary based on some educated guesses about the kinds of crimes that land you in each category:

Non-violent: 70%

Violent: 30%

That's only counting federal prisoners. When you include state prisoners you get

Violent: 47%

Property: 17%

Weapons: 5%

It's not obvious to me that the "vast majority" of prisoners are not dangerous.

I question the reliability of the metrics, especially at the state-level where records keeping, analysis, and justice procedures are disjoint. I would find it hard to believe that we have both the highest prisoners per capita and the highest violent people per capita.

Why is this hard to believe? Even with more ready access to guns, Americans stab, beat, and bludgeon more people to death that most countries entire murder rate. The US is a violent country even without counting the guns.

Don't take this to absurdisms. I take it you're not American? The stereotypes about us are no more true than the stereotypes about your country.

I believe GP's claim is factually accurate. The USA has the 4th highest homicide rate in the OECD, after Mexico, Turkey, and Estonia [1]. Roughly 2/3 of US homicides are using firearms [2]. After reducing the US homicide rate by a factor of 3, the US would still be 13th (out of 34) on the OECD list, between Portugal and France.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/oecd-homicide-rates-chart-201... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_S...

Which figures are you using to consider their statement absurd? I suppose the 'most' countries part is only true if you restrict it to the usually considered rich countries or 'developed' countries, but that seems like a reasonable restriction to make given the context.

I did a quick calculation based on probably obsolete numbers, but I got a homicide rate of around 4.8 per 100000 of which 2.7 are with guns, leaving 2.1 without which is still higher than most European countries. (check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... )

The comment I was replying to was:

>Americans stab, beat, and bludgeon more people to death that most countries entire murder rate. The US is a violent country even without counting the guns.

Which is still not backed up. However, I am surprised to see the stats on the murder rate and gun violence all the same.

"violent" is not the total subset of "dangerous".

Why do we think that "dangerous people" is a coherent concept? Are there actually two million people in the US who are inherently dangerous and will commit crimes no matter what?

It's hard to know the exact number, but there certainly are people prone to violence. I don't see any indication there exists a reliable method to make them less so.

you really dellude yourself that this works?

how about: prisons turns thousands of lowly offenders into hardened, violent criminals that will be out in innefective parole a few months down the road?

doesnt that make you more scared than "but at least 5 of them will be back in prision before commiting any seriously violent crime"

I've thought this for a long time. How do you actually make it happen, though?

If prisons had to refund the state when there was an instance of recidivism, they'd have an incentive to insure former prisoners were able to integrate back into society again.