The conservatives need to hear this from other patriots. Republican politicians push to the right on "law and order" and "get tough on crime." Most of the people in prison are there for _non-violent_ and _victimless_ crimes (i.e., drugs, but other similar as well). Violent offenders, of course, are never "cured" or "rehabilitated" but only find prison to be a suitable environment for predators. Prisons as we know them were invented by Quakers in Pennsylvania in the 18th century. That was when they invented solitary confinement. (Not everything about their religion is goodness and light.) And prisons are expensive. For the cost of imprisonment, even a violent offender could be given competent psychological counseling to identify (if not cure) their real problem.

Objectively, granted that some offenders are unremediable, imprisonment as internal exile may be the only alternative to simply executing them. However, given that serial murderers are known to have abused animals when they were children, is _that_ the point (objectively) where the law comes down to prevent future harms to innocent people, i.e., executing children who are cruel?

Prison is the blank-out problem in the Objectivist theory of government. We agree that the government has police powers as a proper function. We seldom talk about the appropriate consequences of trial and conviction.

Follow the money. Another bureaucratic boondoggle.

In California it's our biggest industry. If you do construction/design engineering work in California you will end up building prisons and/or court houses. That's where the money is. That's where the development is.

It's disgraceful.