The reason for prison

People seem divided on whether people should go to jail for punishment and rehabilitation, or for revenge. This was really brought into focus when Milosevic died in prison, and everyone was upset because "justice hadn't been done." Considering that he was almost certainly looking at a death sentance, what they wanted there wasn't "justice", they wanted revenge, plain and simple.

Here's the rub: if you're not going to take measures to reform a criminal, you may as well just kill him or lock him up forever, because he's just going to break the law again. Some people behave after getting out, but they tend to be the minority. But prison doesn't do a very good job of rehabilitating the people you send there, which is why the system is so dysfunctional.

The goal of rehabilitation keeps getting tripped up again by people who can't decide what jail is there for. You've got measures and policies being passed by those who think jail time = revenge, those who think jail exists as punishment to demonstrate to criminals that what they did was wrong, and those who blame the victim and think it's wrong to be mean to lawbreakers.

The most glaring example: the death sentance and life without parole exist simultaneously. Why? Both sentances mean that the state does not believe you can ever be reformed. If you have a death sentance on the books and the criminal will always be dangerous, why not just kill him and save the taxpayers money? The only reason to issue a life sentance in such a situation is if you believe that the legal system exists to exact revenge, and that both sentances are merely degrees of vengance.

I don't use the word "justice" because I don't really see locking someone up as such. The jail part is just to segregate the dangerous person from the rest of society until you've rehabilitated them. Recompension, either to the victim or the state, is justice, which is why I also think they need to put all these cons to work.

Jam it back in, in the dark.