Prison should not be cruel (e.g., solitary confinement for more than a short period of time in unacceptable), but it should still be unpleasant if it is to serve as a deterrent to committing crime, and that is definitely one of the biggest reasons we have prisons... to incentivize people to stay out of them.
If in a game I can steal 10 points and at most get a 1 point penalty for getting caught, I'm much more likely to give it a shot than if I get a 10 or 20 point penalty for getting caught. Plus, if everyone else in the game is cheating and getting away with it, I'm much more likely to try it too.
The problem is if you make the penalties so severe and the application of the rules unequal, then you end up with chopping people's hands off for stealing.
I'm sure there are tons of people that would be willing to risk a month or even a year in Club Fed for a chance at set for life money.
The calculation is different for everyone.
It would be a much better deterrent to know that if a crime were committed, the punishment came swiftly: the threat of (almost) immediate jail time is much more powerful than the maybe (your life is over).
Again, if a society truly valued freedom, just losing that would be such a great punishment. When you say that such a punishment is not enough its precisely because you dont value freedom that highly.
What brought me to this path was the simple thought exercise: should escaping jail be illegal? How can it be illegal if it is a fundamentally moral act?
Prisons aren't mainly intended to deter crime, they are for satisfying the public's vengeance lust and to divert taxpayer funds to cronies of government officials.
Unfortunately, it is estimated 4% of people in jail are wrongfully incarcerated. What to do about those in this appeasing stance?
I think restricting freedom of movement as punishment is saying that society values law and order (or safety) on equal footing with freedom.
Sure, there are tons of laws that don't make sense and that don't actually make us safer.
But for serious crimes the mechanism of removing your freedom if you remove our safety actually respects freedom as having a lot of value.
And for less serious crimes, you're correct the punishment rarely fits the crime.
This is nonsensical. If we valued freedom, we'd make prisons into resorts?
Prisons are intended first and foremost to punish criminal offenders and to deter them from committing additional crimes by removing their opportunity to further offend. If they were luxurious, you'd get plenty of people who would commit crimes just so they could keep enjoying the life of luxury you propose. Not every cares about abstract concepts like freedom.
US prisons are also not as bad as most people think. In the real world, they're mostly like Orange is the New Black, not Oz.
Your indignation is just because you value freedom very lowly. It is true that another man's freedom is so worthless to oneself that it doesn't sate your thirst for vengeance.
If a society valued freedom as highly as possible, sending someone to prison would be such a spectacular condemnation that great accomodations would be offered. Instead, prisons serve as a demeaning punishment and eternal condemnation.
There is great moral value in taking the liberty stance: it would mean that prison would not be a great punishment for the great number of innocent and wrongfully incarcerated. And It would also be a lot easier to prosecute all kinds of crimes, as prison would not be as terrible as it is (but, if freedom valued, still a punishment)