[olavolav]

Dear HN audience. For almost all of the topics discussed here, if you haven't already, please go read this book:

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison [1]

The seminal book on questions like: Where do prisons come from? Why did anyone ever think that they were a good idea? Do they work?

Highly recommended

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish

[Double_a_92]

People that did bad things are not running around freely anymore... It's not rocket science ._.

[olavolav]

Well, I think the OP should give you the idea that if your goal is (for example) to reduce violent crime rates overall, then the answer might be more complicated than that...