And I think the punishment part has two aspects to it. Deterrence being one, and preventing vigilantism being the second.

In cases where someone is wronged, they want to see the perpetrator punished and feel like they are getting what they deserve. It's not enough to have the perpetrator punished quietly. The victim wants to know it. And they want to feel as though it matches or surpasses their suffering. Eye for an eye.

No, rehabilitiation is explicitly NOT part of prison. Stop spreading that myth. From Federal Title 18 §3582. Imposition of a sentence of imprisonment:

"recognizing that imprisonment is not an appropriate means of promoting correction and rehabilitation"

And yet 18 U.S. Code § 3553 - Imposition of a sentence (referenced by 3582) says: the need for the sentence imposed—

(A) to reflect the seriousness of the offense, to promote respect for the law, and to provide just punishment for the offense; (B) to afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct; (C) to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant; and (D) to provide the defendant with needed educational or vocational training, medical care, or other correctional treatment in the most effective manner;

D sounds a lot like rehabilitation to me.

3553 is about sentencing. Sentencing includes all sentencing only one part of which is prison. Section 3553 D give authority to a judge to sentence to things like residential drug treatment programs, or giving a term of supervised release after prison. Title 18 §3582 is the statute a judge is required to follow when imposing prison as part of a sentence, and it EXCLUDES BY STATUTE a judge considering rehabilitation when imposing a prison sentence. I show the exact statue that makes it ILLEGAL for a judge to do what you claim, and you repost your incorrect misreading of 3553, and then Hacker News tells me to slow down and prevents me from posting a response for hours.

Ok - IANAL - I’ll take your word for it that I misunderstand the statute.

There is no need to take my word, it's the law. Read the statues. Or, there are tons of cases (which is then settled case law) on this very subject.

Funny you care enough to post false information to shape a narrative of your choosing but not enough to educate yourself on the subject.

> Funny you care enough to post false information to shape a narrative of your choosing but not enough to educate yourself on the subject.

I think that was uncalled for. I am not “posting false information to shape a narrative”. I was wrong about my understanding of the statute because as you pointed out my understanding of “sentencing” was incorrect.

You might take “you’re right” with a little more grace.

(You also might look into state systems. Texas runs the second largest prison system in the US. They explicitly cite rehabilitation as a role for prisons.)

Let's see, I responded to your first comment with an actual statute. You then immediately responded with an incorrect interpretation of a different statute and presented a false narrative, instead of looking into the issue and understand what I posted. During the time the story was on the front page, I was blocked by HN from responding to your incorrect reply. So your bad hot take was amplified making my initial factual response look incorrect.

You then never said I was correct, you said 'I’ll take your word for it' which can have implied subtext and connotation. I responded there was no need to 'take my word' when it comes to the facts and what the law says, and that if you want to stake out a non-factual position instead of 'taking my word' maybe educate yourself on the issue that you felt strongly enough about to post false information about multiple times.

I'm sorry but 'I'll take your word' is not even close to saying 'you're right'.

Even in the above, you try to redirect to Texas, when the Feds have established via constitutional challenges and studies that 'imprisonment is not an appropriate means of promoting correction and rehabilitation'. Who do you think has delved into the issue deeper? The Feds or Texas? Why do you keep pushing that prison is rehabilitative when you have 1. nothing to back your position 2. made assertions relating to it that are PROVEN not factual? 3. You present nothing to disprove the Federal Judicial System's position that it is not rehabilitative? Why do you keep pushing a false narrative? If the Federal Judicial System declares imprisonment is not an appropriate means of promoting correction and rehabilitation you have a higher bar than 'your personal feelings' (which I apologize for hurting) that your personal opinion countermans the entire Federal justice system's position, along with Congresses' position and the Congressional committees that do extensive research in writing the statutes.

If rehabilitation were a goal, the US could learn a lot from other countries how to do that. I don’t see that happening though. So I conclude the system has other more important goals.

The usual complaint about rehabilitation methods seems to be that they compromise the deterrence or retribution aspects.

> So I conclude the system has other more important goals.

I think you are confusing "this system is bad at achieving its goals" and "this system has other goals". The goals of the prison system are really hard. Rehabilitating people is really hard.