It makes it hard for the average person to take these suggestions seriously.
My father was a two-time decorated veteran. I was a military wife a lot of years.
Vitamins for convicts could save taxpayers money
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140867
My decade as a fugitive
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21481540
Both have comments by me if anyone wants to know what I think and not what people want to imagine about me.
I've never once met anyone who felt that way. I'd actually like to have the chance. People might not want criminals tortured, might not want people imprisoned unnecessarily, might not want people arrested for things that should never have been crimes in the first place, but I'm pretty skeptical that there's any substantial number of people who don't want to see serial killers kept away from the public or who feel that all crimes should go unaddressed entirely.
That's not punishment, that's social risk management. Punishment is the deprivation of dignity which the system imposes. Those cells should be a minimum of two-star hotel, the doors should be mostly controlled by the occupants, they should be treated in a dignified manner like any member of the public, they should be paid competitive wages for their work, any housing and restitution charges on those wages should be capped at 1/2 and commissary must charge median prices so as to encourage savings and financial independence on release, etc.
There's also eliminating custodial sentencing for acute nonviolent crimes.
I saw a blurb once that for every dollar spent on taking care of preschoolers, you save five dollars down the road on prison costs and similar. So the antidote seems to me to be to try to foster civilization -- feed people better, family-friendly policies, pro-education policies, etc.
A lot of issues that should be resolved before it's this ugly don't get resolved at the "stitch in time" level and then it's a slippery slope and here we are. But suggesting you do the small, thoughtful thing -- people see that as unrelated. It's not heroic enough. They want to take on something big and defeat it.
And here we are and here we stay.