by Jon Marc Taylor

About the author: Jon Marc Taylor is a prison journalist who has been incarcerated for the past 19 years.

The debate over the function and purpose of prisons is as old as the concept of incarceration. From the advent of the competing Auburn and Pennsylvania systems to Brockway’s Reformatory structure to the Medical Model evolving into the Just Deserts warehousing operation and the current “retributive justice” perspective, society has never settled on what it wants or expects from the act of imprisonment: deterrence, incapacitation, punishment, or rehabilitation—or a combination thereof.

For the past two decades, the pendulum of the use of increasing correctional punitiveness has swung to the right, reaching a crescendo during the last election cycle. Searching for “hot button” topics and “sizzling soundbites...