Prisons lead to bad outcomes, are immoral, and should be abolished
"Prison," a slang term for Crime College, is the worst possible way of punishing people.
Countries with rehabilitation-model prisons have low recidivism rates but have high first-time crime rates. Many countries with punishment-model prisons have high crime rates anyway and in worst cases offenders enter gangs and become even more criminal than before. Locking someone up in Crime College is expensive and achieves bad outcomes & it also morally dubious: it assumes that being deprived of freedom is a moral equivalency punishment for all acts with only time as a variable. It absolves society of taking real moral responsibility for punishing disorder and violence and it restores nothing to victims.
It should be replaced with three options:
(a) Corporal punishment,
(b) Direct cash payments by court order from offender->victim,
(c) Capital punishment for many offences, either those which are intensely heinous or for which there can be no restitution, or for gangs and crime lords et cetera
We should also bring back outlawry. Prisons should only be for holding violent criminals until trials can be arranged.