Hey; I'm sorry to hear about that thing Bill, I hope it didn't hit a nerve. Penal theory is dense and it doesn't seem to lend itself to easy solutions. Some states are easy time and some are real rough. I guess you could look at the status of recidivism to see if the easy ones or the hard ones do better. As I say there are crimes and then there are crimes. I have no mercy...none for certain types of crime and I could care less if they hung those perpetrators. But in other cases I would be more hesitant to judge how they should be treated. Maybe make them eat the loaf or something. You know about the LOAF? In case it's not familiar the loaf is a ground up mess of soy beans and vegetable waste with fillers. They give it too prisoners who misbehave. While the food is healthy it tastes so bad that they say prisoners try to escape rather than eat it. Grown men cry when it appears on their plate. Yeah; big tough guys. It's just that bad. It's like my mother-in-laws meatloaf.