Do we, as a society, believe that the primary purpose of prison is to punish, or rehabilitate?
If it's to rehabilitate there should be ZERO tolerance for violence. You can't confine someone against their will and allow violent acts to be perpetrated against them. Who would want to participate in a society, after release, that did that to them?
We should also have a broader criteria for the death penalty.
We should also have a broader criteria for the death penalty.
Yes, but we also need to narrow the scope of what is a felony and what is not. Many modern "felonies" are victimless misdemeanors with an arbitrary "felony" label set by overzealous legislators. Conversely, malicious felons should receive proportionately harsh sentences.
I think either way you should have zero tolerance for violence. But as far as reality goes, I don't think these things are officially tolerated. It's hard to control people.
Perhaps a corollary of the maxim that you can judge a society by how well it treats its prisoners is that you can judge a society by how its prisoners behave.
Even if it's to punish, unless negro rape gangs are an explicit part of the sentence (unlikely: 8th amendment) there should still be zero tolerance.
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