The awkward question about the meaning of prisons in America

There is an awkward question about prisons in America that is not generally discussed in polite society. By polite society, I mean those people who should be discussing the question and holding themselves accountable for answers and solutions.

Just exactly what are prisons supposed to do? I have heard several rather evasive answers whenever that question is squeezed out in a conversation like flatulence in a stuffy room. There is sniffing, looking around, awkward silence, and descent into gibberish.

The rationale for spending $38,000+ per offender per year is generally "well, we need to keep the public safe." Separating offenders from their criminal friends and families (sometimes the lines blur between which is which) and society at large is supposed to do this.

It doesn't! And it doesn't for several reasons. Criminal friends and family still have contact with the offender. Prison does not become an isolation ward for the dangerous to protect the public, but more often that not operates as the main offices of "Crime Inc." Prisons are organized and deeply influenced by the offenders housed within, rather than by prison officials, guards, and administrators.

And perhaps the most important reason this does not work, prisons act as a toxic spill that creeps and seeps into everything that surrounds them and touches them. Employees of prisons, in fact, all law enforcement personnel are all badly influenced by continual contact with offenders. It affects the way they think, the way they consider others, their world view, their values, their morals, their marriages, their parenting, and their very souls. And through these contacts and associations, the free world is profoundly impacted. The offender may not be physically present, but his influence is felt in big and small ways.