| > No ex-convict wants to return to prison. Some do. Perhaps the most famous example is Charles Manson who said he'd been in prison for so much of his life that it was his home. Sorry I forget the source, but one longtime prisoner said that after release, it's like he was still in jail, because after being imprisoned, the real prison is in your mind. Incarceration becomes a mindset. With three strikes laws locking people up for life for relatively minor third offences, this should give us pause. Putting these examples aside, there is a lot of evidence that punishment simply does not work. For example many states have the death penalty for capital crimes, sometimes by the medievally brutal electric chair[1], and still people continue to commit murder. [1] Like burning at the stake with all the modern conveniences. |