It's not a question of prison. The problem is cushy prison. If the city and county jails were terrifying hell holes that nobody would ever want to return to after their first night in one, then I don't think we'd have such a large prison population today. I'd like to know what the repeat offender ratio is in countries like Turkey and Burma. It's probably pretty low compared to US. The right kind of prison is worse than a death sentence in the sense that it actually IS a death sentence, but it takes a lot of years of misery to achieve that sentence. I remember reading about death sentences in one third world country. Almost none of the prisoners sentenced to life in prison made it out of their 30s alive.
