The problem with this line of thinking is that some how people think that serving time in prison does anything to make someone less likely to commit crime. Our prison system doesn't positively reform people, in fact it almost certainly will make things worse. If you make someone spend 13 years in a prison, whose social rules are defined by violent criminals the persons cultural norms change.

The person doesn't leave prison ready to productively reenter society, they leave prison indoctrinated into prison culture.

If you made a programming error at work, and instead of someone spending time to teach you how you ended up making that mistake, and working to give you the knowledge and tools to not make it again. But instead made you stand in a corner for a fixed duration of time, it would be illogical to assume you would be a better programmer after standing in the corner, its the same with the US prison system.

I don't disagree with you, but I cannot fault the individual for the failings of the system. I also support efforts to reform and improve the prison system to focus on reform and improvement, rather than punishment.

Society decides that their crimes earns them X years of punishment. After they've done their X years, there should be no need to punish them more. I sympathize with the victims of the convict's crimes which depending on the crime, no value of X would suffice. But we are all human, and sometimes showing a shred of compassion is what motivates the real reform.