alt Hacker NewsNo it shouldn't.
It should be the understanding of a society that no human being is just 'bad'. A human being became 'bad' by a definiton of a society due to circumstances like upbringing, environment etc. and a society which failed you.
Prison is the removal of you from society due to impatibility of current values and should help you become 'better'.
Be happy that you had good/avg parents, the mental strength to help yourself, money, luck, body strength, whatever it was which allowed you to comment on HN instead of being in a prison.
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> due to circumstances like upbringing, environment etc. and a society which failed you.
It's always someone else's fault.
Well, letting the humanist rehabilitation part aside, there is that social aspect of a sanctioning instance to prisons. Expectations of sanctions do drive human behavior.
>no human being is just 'bad'
Meanwhile in this thread, everyone is getting worked up about how evil Texas Christians supposedly are, as though a red flag was waved in front of a bull.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
I don't need a degree in sociology to want the dude who broke into my car removed from society.
If he finds the experience improving, so much the better, but it is not my primary concern.
Society as a whole is not wholly responsible. Some people are taught and some are just bad - bad brains, bad choices, bad intents. I've never had to teach a toddler what to do when another child takes their toy. Somethings are just innate. Some can be helped and should be, others cannot. Taking away an individual's responsibility removes dignity and gets in the way of healing. We don't have to give into the fallacy of choosing one or the other - both society and the individual can be responsible for their actions.
But yes, we have been devaluing human life and dignity, or if you prefer the Image of God, across all of society. The conditions of these prisons should not exist even if this is purely punitive, which I do not believe it should be. Victims deserve justice, but criminals deserve the right to pay the price and come out "clean". We should want to make society whole, to bring them back into the fold as full members, but too often we don't want to pay the cost.