I don’t see why. There’s no reason to keep people locked up for so long. If they don’t belong in society, contributing and mingling with other people, then they don’t belong in this life...period. Send them to the next life.
But the first thing I think they need to do is to drastically shorten all jail times...and make them way way more unpleasant. They never will though. It will mean huge job losses in the penal system. And the penal system is self serving, just like government. They will never put up with a reduction in their bugets or their payrolls.
I agree completely about most of what you said. But I have read that solitary confinement drives people insane in a relatively short period of time. I have always felt that the privatization of prisons was a bad idea. I agree there are a lot of people in prison who should be killed. And I guess you are saying that a return to a productive tax-payer is the sign of Rehabilitation? There is no reason to keep a person saddled with a felony if they have returned to a decent life. Shorter prison terms for some offenses, or no prison time at all. And the penal system is self-serving. I see the major barrier to any type of reform in the fact that too many people, especially now, are too burdened with their own problems to even care.
A young co-worker of mine, when I asked him if he was going to vote, told me “No, that would make me eligible for jury duty.”
And I have a suspicion that under Obama, the growth of the prison system is going to explode.