New Jersey

Are prisons, especially youth offender prisons, to discipline and teach better ways to cope in society or are they merely instruments of punishment.

If we treat them as houses of punishment, we condemn far too many to a life of incarceration with brief respites of "freedom". But not real freedom, as those individuals will have no skills for a free society.

We saw the Norwegian mass murderer and are shocked at how 'light' his sentence was. How shocked would most of the industrialized world be that we start the timer on life prison sentences on juveniles.

Perhaps if we tried to discipline in prisons and did not turn prisons into profit centers, we wouldn't need this discussion.