What alternative do you propose? If someone is convicted of a crime; a real crime that deserves punishment. What do you feel is a good way to deal with criminals? Forced labour to make restitution to their victims seems an appropriate sentence to me. Of course for minor property crimes and such a thorough public whipping and some time in the stocks would be good. Pain and humiliation; nature's best teachers.
For adults? Or for minors?
It is my view that an adult person who commits a serious crime against another person needs to be put in prison. Not for two or three years, but a
real sentence. Start with something like ten years for burglary and get on with it from there. Anybody who commits multiple serious crimes needs to be too old to re-offend by the time he crawls out into the light.
The important thing is that we cannot reliably rehabilitate anybody with any system, so I think it's important they be isolated from us normal people for the duration of their sentence. We don't yet know how to make sure Johnny Criminal doesn't re-offend when he's out after his burglary sentence is up, but he's sure not to be breaking into people's homes for the duration.
If the liberals want to try some rehabilitation crap on them, they're free to do this, but, with rare exemption, it shouldn't lead to them coming out of prison.
For minors, the whole idea that they are minors implies they're not fully responsible for their acts. So there should be lighter sentences and systems that make it easier to return them into society as much as possible. There are a variety of programs that have far lower recidivism rates than boot camps and are much less likely to lead to psychological damage or suicide.
