The following appeared in an editorial in the Los Angeles Times:
What's prison for, anyway? Is it to change people, to punish them, or simply to remove them from the streets? If the number of cells is finite, society better figure out its reasons for selecting whom it locks up and how long it holds them.
Unfortunately, states and the federal government have done a poor job of defining what they want from their prisons. That sort of philosophical fumbling was brought home again with a report from the American Civil Liberties Union that found 3,200 people in nine states serving sentences of life without parole for nonviolent crimes.
Judges often have no choice but to hand down such excessive terms under mandates meant to ensure harsh punishment for repeat offenders. But if the point is to get the thief to stop stealing, a lifetime behind bars is an absurdly expensive way to get the job done. Only the most dangerous offenders, those who would perpetrate violence, should be locked away forever.
For most offenders, lockup is, and ought to be, temporary. Their sentences exact a measure of societal retribution but should also get them to change their behavior when they re-enter society. With incapacitation, retribution and deterrence, rehabilitation — a change that comes with education, skills training, cognitive behavioral therapy and, where appropriate, substance-abuse treatment — is legitimate and necessary.
It would be naive to believe every offender can be rehabilitated. Society needs prisons to protect itself, to punish and to deter. But it is foolhardy to lock up felons for unreasonably long periods, clogging prisons, wasting taxpayer dollars and failing to establish a coherent connection between the sentence and what it is supposed to accomplish.