After researching a great deal, many years ago, I reached a conclusion that almost all prisons do no good. Not, I hasten to stress, because people like this are best left wandering around. This week or last, radio 4 had a feature on some senior and sensible person who advocated closing most prisons, because they cannot make sense.
A lot of the people in them are more victim than villain. (A large proportion were abused, unwanted, neglected babies, and went despairingly on from there) There are inadequate, bewildered, hopeless, mentally ill, drug addicts. The literacy rate is low. After a conviction, they have little realistic chance of anything but crime.
It interested me that treating people like humans tends to make them behave better. Scandinavians apparently put fewer people in prison, but they are likely to get treatment and support aimed to change their behaviour. They are keen to have child and partner friendly meeting places and even conjugal visits, since they know a prisoner's continued contact with any family will be the best assistance to keeping on the right path after release. A minority of course need to be kept away from the public permanently.
The expert on radio 4 advocating closing prisons didn't mention hormones, but it had fascinated me that there's a direct correlation with testosterone levels and violence, even for women. It was long ago, but as I remember, the Scandinavian model included an option for rebalancing hormones, and also the option for those whose sexual interests were criminal, and not controllable, to choose to have medical assistance to ensure they had no interest in sex. It would seem sense to give the opportunity, because truly there is not the faintest chance that locking a man up, then letting him out, will change his sexual preferences. Once a danger, always a danger,(and a man of 70 80 or 90 who wishes to do something, and has the opportunity to do it, is still a danger)