From an American perspective that's like giving the lion at the zoo a 24 hour leave to stroll around the city. It's so obviously absurd almost nobody would ever

From an American perspective that's like giving the lion at the zoo a 24 hour leave to stroll around the city. It's so obviously absurd almost nobody would ever think of it unprompted. Many of the higher security prisons here are brutal dangerous paces. Sentences are long, often lifelong. Surviving a 30 year sentence without committing further crimes in prison that add to your sentence isn't so easy. Anybody with significant time left on their 30 year sentence would be a fool not to flee if given a 24 hour leave. Some of the low security prisons do have some resources focused on rehabilitation. But a lot of the higher security ones where most serious/violent/drug convicts end up are essentially warehouses for storing people who can't legally be executed until they're old and feeble enough to be released "safely" as pensioners/disabled/homeless. There's a reason criminal justice reform is such a big deal. Much of the country wishes we could dispense with the warehousing and just execute them all. While another contingent is very much tired of being thrown into those warehouses to rot based on race/socioeconomic status/the size of their bag of weed or a variety of other relatively harmless infractions.