[crusso]

if the purpose of prison is to rehabilitate people

You imply that rehabilitation is the only reason for prison and that there are proven methods of rehabilitation.

Rehabilitating people is hard and we don't know of any great ways to do that. Removing criminals from society is easy and straightforward.

[thatswrong0]

> Rehabilitating people is hard and we don't know of any great ways to do that.

Other countries have lower recidivism rates. Why not copy their leads? (http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/why...)

If the point of our prison system is to lower crime rates, it isn't doing a very good job.

[MisterBastahrd]

Most of them go back into society with the albatross of having been in jail around their necks, not to mention the gap in work history. Going so far as to give lifers an education (along with the rest of the population) reduces crime. The prison population are still citizens who deserve to be treated well. They don't deserve to be the victims of crime any more than anyone else. The vast majority of people in jail are people with poor educations, poor upbringings, and/or mental disorders. Giving them a hand up is vastly more preferable than leaving them to their own devices and then tossing them back onto the streets.

[digikata]

And really really expensive. If the point is a safe society without high costs of maintenance it seems foolish to overlook rehabilitation.

[tomjen3]

We could make it much cheaper, if we wanted to. Cages hold a man as well as cells made of bricks, prisoners can work whenever they are not sleeping and things like recreational facilities are just going be used for and by gangs.

We could make prisons much cheaper than they currently are just by choosing either rehabilitation or warehousing. Warehousing would be even cheaper - or maybe split the prisoners up by worth (essentially asking is this person a good person who did something bad, or a bad person) and then have two different criminal systems.

[king_jester]

> Removing criminals from society is easy and straightforward.

This is one of the biggest misconceptions about prison. Prisons and incarceration do not remove people from society, those people are still a part of society even if their interaction and freedoms are restricted. Not too mention who and what defines criminality is a horribly messed up system.