There are actually three different justifications for prison:

* Retribution ("a punishment")

* General prevention ("a jailed person cannot keep hurting others and prison threat is a deterrent")

* Special prevention (rehabilitation)

Last time I looked, most countries are mostly for general prevention with a pinch of special prevention. Retribution is not currently defensible philosofically or technically, though some people errounesly think it's the basis of the system.

4. Deterent

5. Make money

I'm quite curious: who counts as 'civilized' these days? Clearly not the UAE (we've just seen an article on Dubai debtors prisons on these pages) but it seems we'd need to take Japan off the list, for instance (see e.g. https://www.economist.com/asia/2015/12/03/silent-screams ) and if we have to take them off the list I'm not sure where we end up stopping

The Netherland seems like a good bet.

I look with envy at how they do a lot of things.

Apart from the pissing contest of who has a better penal system, can anyone in this discussion show that there’s a system to imprison people which parts people with their strongly held moral beliefs and should do so?

I would assume that in most countries rehabilitation is seen the same way as here in the US. It focuses on the top causes for crimes - lack of education, lack of opportunity. So there are rehabilitation programs that educate people and help place them in work programs.

I would assume that rehabilitation does not focus on changing people's ideological values.

Am I wrong? Is that a thing in other countries?

Generally rehabilitating beliefs is associated with authoritarian regimes (reeducation camps) or abuse (claiming to cure innate characteristics that others find inconvenient like sexuality or disability)

Very much so, de-radicalization in prisons is at least attempted in many places. Here is a look at EU’s approach which varies quite widely. https://iris.unito.it/retrieve/handle/2318/1720819/557443/Pr...

>most of the civilised world treats prison as rehabilitation.

Few countries in Western and/or Northern Europe? That's a very narrow definition.

Presuming because of your use of pounds: do you seriously think our prison system is particularly rehabilitative?

> most of the civilised world

Even without the spelling or the previous reference to GBP, I could have guessed nationality from your tone.