> You also seemed to have missed the recursive pattern in her statement. "I'll probably be on the streets," infers - to me at least - that she'll be homeless an

> You also seemed to have missed the recursive pattern in her statement. "I'll probably be on the streets," infers - to me at least - that she'll be homeless and/or without the prospect of any employability. This facet, right here, explains the recursive nature of repeat offenders. It wasn't a direct quote — I paraphrased from memory. As I recall, she wasn't homeless. By being "on the streets", I think she meant she'll be consorting with other common criminals, possibly dealing in drugs and sex. She gets in with the wrong crowd, offends, is incarcerated, gets out, rejoins the same crowd, etc. I don't have any grand answers to this big complex problem. My point is I still believe in punishing criminals (proportionately). If you have an unruly kid in the class and you send him outside, if he is able to pull faces at the other students or in any way undermine the teacher's authority, he will endure the punishment and then continue to be unruly because his spirit is not broken. I don't think adults are any different. The key difference between cultures (at least what I could glean from these documentaries, so this is totally unscientific) is that the Russian authorities do not give an inch, so the inmates have no choice but to surrender their pride and learn their place. Empathy doesn't work with everyone. Anders Behring Breivik is an example; he commits a truly terrible crime, and now he is mocking us from the comfort of his cell which has more amenities than in the homes of many innocent and hard-working people in Eastern Europe or South-East Asia.