I have a rather rambling answer to this …

As a legal correspondent for much of my career, I have spent a tremendous amount of time in prisons all over the country. Isolation is an extreme measure and needs to be reserved for the most extreme cases. But having spent months at the Angola prison in Louisiana where more than 90 percent of the inmates are there for life, I think isolation has to be an option for those trying to keep such a facility running safely both for the sake of those who work there and for the sake of other inmates.  

Programs for prisoners vary widely across the country. I do think it’s worth noting that an estimated 80 percent of the people in prison are functionally illiterate. They enter that way, and by and large, leave that way. In Japan, inmates are required to learn to read. I understand their recidivism rates are far below ours. Seems like they may be on to something. 

In law school, you are taught that punishment has several purposes: to protect society, to rehabilitate, to punish those who break the law and to deter others from doing so. One day, walking through Angola’s death row, I asked the warden, an affable Christian named Burl Cain, about the latter: "Does the threat of the death penalty cause people to think twice before committing murder?" The warden paused a long moment, "Cynthia, the people doing the thinking and the people doing the shooting are two different groups of people." I suspect he’s right.

I have long been opposed to our prison system and, were I younger, would take up the cause of prison reform. I can’t believe that putting anyone, — including violent, dangerous sociopaths — in cages with metal bars and providing maybe an hour a day of exercise outdoors is the right solution. Solitary confinement confounds the effect of dehumanizing these people. I’m sympathetic to the people who run the prisons and need to find answers to the issue of punishing infractions and crimes within prisons. I have no good answer as to how to control the most violent prisoners. However, I do know that it makes no sense to put drug addicts (who fill our prisons) into cages as punishment for using drugs or for smalltime selling to support their own addictions.

Years ago, I did a documentary on Rikers Island in the men’s prison and it was a shocking eye-opener with its bareness, the noise of metal-bar doors opening and closing as you walked from section to section. The only diversion the men had all day was to gather in one large cell and watch TV by the hour. Virtually everyone there was in for drugs. All were going to be let out within a year or so (since Rikers is not for the most serious offenders). It did not take a genius to figure out that they’d be right back within six months or a year of release. Some prisons do better than others in terms of providing various work and education opportunities. But most confine the prisoners to cages or very overcrowded bunk rooms. There has to be a better way.