What is the main purpose of a prison?

Keeping criminals away from people they can cause harm to again.

>>3397437
To produce sodomy.

>>3397446
Not all prisons are in America.

>>3397450
Prison rape is not solely an American thing. Hell, you look at things like the Gemara (check out Ketuvot 26b) and you see that prison rape being a more or less assumed experience has been around for at least 1,500 years.

Prisons produce dicks in butts.

>>3397437
A deterrent and a threat. People only comply with the orders their given because if you don't a man with a gun will come and take you to a jail where rape and violence are purposely ignored to a certain extent to make conditions inside just terrible enough as society allows.

>>3397437
It's also the evolution of dungeons and corporal punishment and other historic methods of physical punishment like torture and amputation and death.

>>3397437
It should be to minimize the amount of crime + rehabilitate criminals in the process, since punitive methods tend to backfire by producing more recidivism and making inmates less able to function in normal society. The more brutal and harsh prison conditions got, the more violent and generally chaotic the inmates.

>>3397455
Working that shift at LSP-Angola was what made me practically a Swede on criminal justice.

>>3397437
To punish and isolate people
At least that what its originally were before some humanitarian bullshit came