I am sickened by what happens in prison. This problem cannot be unsolvable, it just needs to be seriously addressed. Seems to me prisons could be designed better. Put video surveillance in every single room. Have more and smaller prisons. Move inmates around to different prisons every couple years to prevent the gang mentality. Prisons should be a model of law and order, not the opposite. I don't believe the purpose of prison is punishment. The purpose should be deterrence and public safety. I wish there was more political will to improving the whole system.
The most important thing-the only REALLY important thing-is to find and segregate the predators.
I, myself, think that human predators should be killed as soon as they are identified, at least if that identification comes about from conviction of a violent crime.
The predators are a distinctive minority among prisoners, and non-predators don't belong in facilities where predators reside.
Don't focus so much on the crime-focus belongs on the criminal.
Example: The guy who killed the 11-year old girl in Florida about a year ago.
He had multiple arrests, each one for an unprovoked violent crime with sexual overtones.
His first arrest was for knocking a woman over the head and dragging her into the woods-she escaped without being raped or seriously injured.
No question he did that act. The question is, what should happen to people who fantasize continuously about hurting women and little girls once they, through their behavior, reveal the capacity to act on their desires?
Probation, which is what he got because the woman was not hurt, is obviously wrong.
Incarceration for a term of years is wrong because a) it gives him abundant raw material to brutalize; b) introduces him, perhaps for the first time in his life, to a cadre of like-minded freaks, and c) he gets out.
Incarceration for life is very expensive, but if my fellow citizens vote to pay the bills rather than kill them, I suppose I can live with that.
But what we're doing now does not work.