Comment: Wow, they visited a whole 20 sites in other countries and the United States and performed 50 interviews, worldwide. The rest was just looking at other reports. This was a poll, not research.  The authors have a “ law and order” approach and do not even consider alternative solutions. I read another one of Winship’s “studies.”His solution to violent recidivists - whom he concedes learned to be violent while in prison - more of the same.  Very useful. Yes, let’s take these folks, especially the young,  and lock them away in prison for years, so when their sentences are done they come out all the worse for being incarcerated. Then - and this is the brilliant part - let’s hurry up and lock them away again. 

Then there is the fact that imprisionment creates and/or exacerbates mental illness.  Virtually every person in prison has a mental illness of some sort. 

Seems to me the purpose of incarceration in this country is to make people ill & turn them into criminals or worse criminals.