How has the prison system failed as a punishment?

Question

How has the prison system failed as a punishment?

Answer 1

They don't have enough prison space to house them all and keep letting them out early to commit more crimes.

Answer 2

The prison system has become a privately-owned enterprise with one purpose...profits!  Thus, justice has flown out of the window while the proceeds keep pouring in.  

Time and again the government has decreed that this jail or that is overcrowded.  So, they release a few nonviolent prisoners, and then proceed to overcrowd the jails again.

Most of the prisoners are in jail or prison because of drug charges or delinquent child support.  These offenders, most of them young, need Rehab, a little maturity and jobs,  but can hardly be called criminals.  Yet they carry the stigma which keeps them getting their lives in order once they are released.

Mandatory sentences have taken away a judge's ability to weigh circumstances.  Mandatory fines are levied on people who haven't the ability to pay. Prisoners are charged for their keep while in prison.  Our prisons are h**l on earth and the best thing is to stay out of them. Unfortunately, this isn't always the case.

Answer 3

It fails because we don't use the system like we used to. Enforce the death sentence! Use Chain gangs! take out all the amenities of Prison, like sleep areas, tv's, recreational yards and library's and c**p like that and put them to work, make prison hard, so hard you don't want to come back!

Answer 4

Because the prison system is no longer designed to punish.  It has become a school for better criminals.  Even in cases were an individual commits a crime and uses prison as a means to better himself --- society will not accept this person, all too often based on a pitiful study by some "daddy got them the job" psychology major.

The Death Penalty does reduce crime by at least 1 life per convict.  

If prisons were made to punish and to encourage respect for the law, it would have a chance to work.  However that chance would not work because people would be very reluctant to allow a former prisoner to work within normal society.

Answer 5

As punishment it works swell-the more we lock up with longer sentences the lower the crime rate. As a mechanism for rehabilitation it's a dismal failure. I have always advocated that prisoners should be paroled into halfway house and the halfway house should be built next door to Democrat politicians.

Answer 6

you need to ask a democrate this since they have such bleeding hearts for all these criminals/gangbangers.