Actually, I think you can do quite a lot from prison. Blaise Pascal famously stated that all of man's problems stems from the inability to sit in a room, alone, quietly. Indeed, many important actions have been taken from prison. But even if activism isn't your taste, but rather self-improvement, it seems like prison is a good opportunity to work on meditation. Indeed, meditation cells in the east are substantially smaller than a prison cell.
Personally, I wish Aaron (and Lessig, and everyone) had made more of a stink. I wish he would have threatened suicide, and then not gone through with it. Maybe swallowed some pills and then rushed to the hospital. That would have gotten attention, and it would have saved a brilliant mind.
If imprisonment just meant being confined, but in otherwise reasonably humane conditions, with decent access to reading/writing material, I could see that as a stomachable option. That's what the historical imprisonment conditions for the upper class were in many countries, and from what I've read is how Scandinavian prisons are run. But everything I've read about the conditions in American prisons does not make them sound humane. They are highly overcrowded, often have purposely punitive conditions (limited access to reading materials, forced labor, etc.), and your risk of suffering violence and rape is extraordinarily high. I don't think I would consider it an acceptable option. And the trouble is, you have to decide ahead of time: if you go to prison on a 30-year sentence and realize sometime while there that you'd rather be dead, it's difficult to do much about it at that point. Even the possibility of that feels horrible and claustrophobic: being stuck somewhere with literally no way out, not through any regular means (change of city, change of friends, restart your life), not even suicide as a way out. Just stuck there.
I think of it as "defense in depth". They can do whatever they want to your body. They can be cruel and abusive. But the psychological stuff, the horror that this is America, the horror at the wanton abandonment of anything like justice, these are the more serious threats. It is an opportunity to see through the illusion that we as a species, but I think especially as Americans, have about ourselves as honorable and good beings that hold people innocent until proven guilty, and which offers trial-by-jury to anyone accused of wrong-doing.
There is no doubt that life would have been the harder path for Aaron. But I think it would have been the better one for him, and for us all, had he continued to fight with every ounce of strength, physical and mental. I wish he had not given up in the face of even overwhelming strength and odds.
The lower levels have plenty of reading material and even internet access. There is little risk of abuse from the other prisoners since they too are there for non violent offenses.
I agree it varies, but what I've read (not mainly from the media, but from government and academic reports) still doesn't paint a particularly pretty picture overall. For example, here is the Bureau of Justice Statistics on prison rape: http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1149
Personally, I wish Aaron (and Lessig, and everyone) had made more of a stink. I wish he would have threatened suicide, and then not gone through with it. Maybe swallowed some pills and then rushed to the hospital. That would have gotten attention, and it would have saved a brilliant mind.