[chmod775]

> At some point you need to assert some tough love and force them to do things they don't want to do. Like work. Or not drink/do drugs.

Your thinking is essentially the tough on crime mentality: Blindly lock people up until they behave the way you want them to. That's how the US ended up with the largest per capita prison population in this solar system and absolutely fucking nothing to show for it.

Tough on crime has failed. Spectacularly so. I wonder for how many more decades one can keep running in the wrong directions with fingers in their ears, telling themselves that approach will start working any day now.

Worse, your proposed punishment may actually constitute an improvement in living condition to the people you're trying to punish ("Off to free meals and a warm bed I go!"). Are you really willing to spend lots of money imprisoning people to give them what you could have given them for way cheaper, just so you can tell yourself you're "punishing" them? At that point one might as well stop pretending one has anyone's best interests in mind and admit to pettiness.