[wongarsu]

At the same time, a criminal system that doesn't try to rehabilitate and reintegrate deprives society of skilled workers, at best delegating them to slave labor in the prison system. It gets even worse if you add unpaid work that prisoners would perform if they weren't imprisoned, like raising their children.

I suspect on a societal level the US justice system costs more than a system without prison labor and a focus on rehabilitation (Sweden gets mentioned frequently, but most of Western Europe qualifies). The US system self-perpetuates because of the profit it brings individuals, not because it's beneficial to society.