A Grim Topic

Bess refuses to have this discussion with me, so I'm going to have it with myself.

A while back, I saw this article about how incredibly comfortable a certain European prison was (was it Iceland? Finland? Denmark? Something like that, I believe), and more recently I've been watching a Dickens story (BBCized) about the Marshalsea prison in London, and what this all amounts to is me revisiting a topic I last debated with a group of lawyers a little more than a year ago...what is the point of prison?

The first reason I can think of (perhaps being an American...) is punishment.  An individual has made some transgression and - like something straight out of Dante - must suffer accordingly. 

Counter to this concept of retribution is that of reform.  Here, prison allows those who have committed crimes to reflect and repent, emerging from the process as an improved citizen.

Prison might also generally be thought of as a motive for not committing a crime.  This can work in one of two ways: what's known as individual deterrence, in which people who have already experienced imprisonment are less likely to step out of line upon release; there's also the thought that the threat of prison might discourage the general populace from breaking laws, which is known as general deterrence.

Lastly, prison serves to isolate criminals from non-criminals  In this way, the public is protected from anyone from a small minority who might be dangerous.

I suppose all of these are (equally? or not?) valid in a system where criminals are always caught and no innocent people are ever put behind bars. But what about in our world? I guess I'll leave it to you to ponder.