The "suck" might please puritanical values. However, it doesn't encourage inmates to get on a better path. It just churns out bitter unemployable people with high rates of recidivism.
We have no way to check if they were actually an inmate or just a sock puppet for their political position. Even then, they never experienced the alternative, so they don't have any more information than we do. A classic "alternative history" problem.
We haven't experienced an alternate-history version of America without slavery, so does that mean we don't have any information on whether it was bad or not?