So which society are you living in? Every statistic shows that minorities get much harsher sentences, are represented by an underfunded public defenders office, are coerced to plea bargain (95%) are harassed more by police etc. The entire criminal Justice system is corrupt to the core.

Let’s not even talk about the “War on drugs” that becomes “treat drug abuse as a medical condition” when it happens in “rural communities”

> Society has no choice but to impose a very unproductive form of punishment

No choice? That’s pretty laughably untrue and flies in the face of all the evidence about incarceration being totally rubbish as a punishment.

Incarceration is not necessarily effective but what alternative can you propose, as a scalable form of punishment? How do you define "totally rubbish"?

We could start by not prosecuting done crimes. Why do you go to jail for possessing marijuana, prostitution, crossed a border without permission, or because you are awaiting trial? (Which is why most people are in jail.)

We start by taking these hundreds of thousands of people who really shouldn't be in jail or prison at all and ask, "what programs would help them from not doing this again? What's the root cause we can address?" And we start implementing social programs that will help support, educate, and reform folks.

Some combination of:

1) Remove a lot of drug crimes from the books and clear convictions. Many of these shouldn't be punishable at all.

2) invest in housing, food, and mental health support to catch folks before they turn to low level theft. Give them to people convicted as well. If you change their situations, many will never need to commit crimes again.

3) Levy fines, garnish wages while providing support. Restrict movement if needed by requiring folks stay in contact with a parole officer or mental health support professional.

Etc

Most "criminals" are folks who are in positions where we left them few choices as a society.

Most of what you're saying is that we should select prisoners better and avoid creating more criminals as a society. The principle I agree. However this part is completely non-sequitur, as the point of contention is whether there's something better than prison to deal with after-the-fact criminals. The only alternative you give is a very soft form of restricting movement, which is devoid of reality for many forms of crime from petty theft and embezzlement to rape and murder.

The goal isn't punishment, it's rehabilitation.

Inmates are one of the largest workforce of CalFire when they need to deal with large forest fires. I don’t CalFire would be able to scale up to the task if they didn’t have this resource. Allegedly it is volunteer-based and you need to meet certain requirements and take training to participate. I’d say this kind of work is above low-impact.

Two articles that bear reading:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-history-of-califo...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2021/02/16/federal-...

This is great though ironically one of the less humane ways to utilize prison labor. To be entrusted with work like that you'd have to have a decent record for a criminal, for example serving for a less serious crime or have made good progress in rehabilitation. But the work is more grueling and dangerous than most other kinds of prison labor.