One asks us to adopt a frame of criminal justice as a social harm reduction policy; the other encourages us to think of criminal justice as a way of doling out

One asks us to adopt a frame of criminal justice as a social harm reduction policy; the other encourages us to think of criminal justice as a way of doling out pain to monsters totally unlike us. It's still not at all an easy problem to solve--a whole lot of what makes prisons so shitty is the other prisoners, but enforcing a total isolation on the criminal from anyone he may hurt or be hurt by is probably more harmful than a shiv, which is the deep tension that any solution will have to work around. But the bigger thing standing in the way of a solution is the belief of most people, which is rarely even thinly veiled, that most criminals deserve whatever they get. Which is understandable: many times (most of the time?) the criminal has actually done something heinous, and I suspect we're programmed to depersonalize and even hate people who commit asocial crimes. But it does lead to barbaric results that a civilized society should reject. ETA: Just to be explicit that there are ways to make the experience of prisons better: don't charge a prisoner $20 for a 15 minute phone call. Allow them internet access. And, more controversially, implement the panopticon--right now there's little to no accountability for the things that happen within prison walls.