If you define everything you find objectionable or sub-optimal as "mental illness" then yes I agree all criminals are mentally ill. In the real world that doesn't define mental illness that way, it's just an excuse for their actions.
Of course, I didn't say that - merely that 'most' crimes are an 'outgrowth' of mental illness. IE it's a symptom. And 'define everything you find objectionable or sub-optimal' is going WAY beyond defining criminal activity as such. There's a lot that I consider such that I don't consider criminal. Stupid, yes, but not criminal.
I'm with you on having a sharp reduction in what's considered criminal, so it takes some
serious anti-social behavior to trigger criminal penalties.
Consider it less an excuse(with the intent of getting out of punishment) and an explanation. You're sick mentally and a danger to others, therefore we're going to contain you and treat you until that's fixed.
Fix the ones you can, deter the ones you can't.
I'd say deter the ones you can, fix as many of the offenders as practical, contain those you can't fix.
Prison is a deterrent - to the non-criminals. It doesn't have to be 'nice' to not deter criminals(plenty of nasty prisons in other countries are still full), same as it doesn't have to be 'bad' to deter most of the possible criminals.
As for the level of offense up against what they were convicted for - that's why I said assess them when they show up. That's a whole person type thing. They probably wouldn't catch a serial killer who's in for burglary because they caught him breaking into a house, not killing anybody, but that should be fairly rare.
I'm not opposed to trying the Scandinavian model, I just recognize that many (most?) of the actual dangerous criminals cannot be reformed. And that unless societal changes happen there will be more and more unredeemable savages being produced.
That's a fairly rare category though. 'Most' can be redeemed with the proper effort. Heck, how many drug cases are clogging up our prisons? There have been plenty of success stories with the most hardened gang members. Under the Scandinavian model these types are declared insane then kept in confinement for the protection of society. At that point, because they're considered insane and too dangerous to be released outside, punishment goes by the wayside(they're crazy/broken, no sense mistreating them) in favor of containment.
Firethorn:
Your posts reveal both a mechanistic view of society along with a plastic view of human nature. All you need to come into view of the killing fields(1) is political power and a little frustration when folk don't act as you would expect them.
(1) Or guillotine, or ovens, or the gulag or...
Huh... I know I'm mechanistic(I'm skewed very far into 'logical'), but I think I've built acknowledgement of failure into my posts. IE going from 60% recidivism down to 30% - that implies that 30% are still going to offend again, but this is better than 60% offending again.
To put it bluntly: I believe that individual humans are unique and unpredictable in many ways. However, you can make very accurate predictions when you examine humans in large numbers.
Also, note that I'm not getting into details for the reform process - that would have to be tailored to the individual prisoner. I'm not qualified to do that.