[jonny_eh]

> How does imprisoning someone help the victims in any way? People have some really fucked up ideas of justice.

Sending people to prison for committing crimes is "fucked up"? We can quibble over which crimes deserve what sentence, but we shouldn't outright dismiss the possibility of imprisoning white collar criminals.

[pitaj]

> Sending people to prison for committing crimes is "fucked up"?

Unironically, yes. Prison is super fucked up.

Prison time barely acts as a deterrent. It doesn't reform criminals. It has high costs for taxpayers.

American prisons are entirely inhumane. Even heard of prison rape? Even violent criminals shouldn't have to endure what goes down in there. With modern technology, house arrest is far better.

Even for extremely violent criminals who are a existent danger, prison is not right. They should be in mental hospitals.

[Lanolderen]

I'll never understand how people in the US believe their prisons are "entirely inhumane". I see it surprisingly often. Every time I've seen a video about an US prison they understandably don't seem like nice places to be at but definitely liveable albeit boring.

[mrguyorama]

There are so many reasons, like rampant rape, the near requirement in some prisons to join a gang to not get beaten up, $10 for a package of ramen in the shop, routine abuse of things like "solitary" by guards to harm people for fun, $3 a minute to call your family, and horrific situations where the warden is made responsible for planning food, and also given the rule that whatever they don't spend of the meal budget they get to personally keep, which results in inmates eating a slice of american cheese on two slices of bread twice a day for most days.

The punishment of prison should be entirely limited to losing your independence and the dignity that comes with it. It should literally be like childhood "time out". These are still human beings and we owe it to them to treat them like people, they just need to be silo'd off from society for a bit sometimes.

[luckylion]

> Prison time barely acts as a deterrent.

What? Why aren't career criminals more brazen in their acts, if not for fear of punishment (which means: prison)?

I totally get the point that you can't just increase the prison sentence and expect the deterrence to scale, but suggesting that punishment "barely acts as a deterrent" sounds insane, especially when we're talking about calculating criminals like Hertz executives. It's not like they have the uncontrollable urge to make false police reports because of some weird psychological defect.

[xdennis]

The primary reason to lock people up is punishment. It's crime and punishment, not crime and deterrence, or crime and reform, or crime and efficient use of taxpayers' money.

Those are all nice-to-haves, but justice is an equal exchange of bad things done by you to bad things done to you.

[pitaj]

I disagree. Punishment is not justice.

[jonny_eh]

Never? What if it keeps a criminal from committing future crimes?