The problem is, wording allows cruel punishment as long as it is usual. We can be usually cruel. If we can be unusually cruel and get away with it for a year or two, it becomes usual cruelty and legal. This is how U.S. prison bureaucracy has constantly increased in legal cruelty. Like phony wars on poverty, drugs and terror that will never end, so is war on crime. All were created as social cancers that consume national economy by people who want government to be sole employers of people. If bigger is better, biggest is bestest.

Cruelly deprive a child of love, affection, self esteem and build a cage for adult you created. When you have this adult locked in a cage, deprive him or her of dignity, love, affection and self esteem. Make him totally dependent for everything he needs for life. Don't allow him any productive work and don't pay him any meaningful pay for menial chores. Isolate him from all he knew except violence and see that he gets regular doses of violence in continuous survival conditions. Further isolate those who get caught up in violence.

Make whole environment so unattractive, as to discourage visitation. Restrict, for half and non legitimate security reasons, his access to decent food and health care. Repress, oppress, suppress and depress this person who did not properly respect some law or other.

When he has become completely dependent on system, turn him loose with nothing and tell him he better get a job. I say, send him to Washington or State Capitol to make new and never ending laws. He will do better than professionals we hire. He at least knows what justice is not. Turning people into beasts is never justice. It is insanity. Once damage is done it needs to be undone, not compounded.

For years, prison industry has been fastest growing segment of American economy. Those who don't get government jobs will fill these prisons and drive up demand for more, bigger and uglier high security housing. It is such a delightful prospect. If what recently happened in Iraq is unattractive, what would it be like here if prisoners were all liberated? Let good times roll, eh? Millions of people who can no longer take care of themselves, settling scores. Let's try that on global TV.

I have noticed recent progress in animal husbandry and I am sincerely pleased by trend. Could we learn enough about humane treatment for animals to teach us humane treatment for people? Can we warehouse people who are restricted but healthy, happy and productive? Do lawbreakers need to permanently forfeit their humanity as punishment? How can incarceration be a just punishment for anything but kidnapping murder and rape, where one deprives another of liberty?

In Old Testament, we had an eye for an eye and tooth for tooth. It was justice without mercy. The New Testament teaches merciful justice but New Testament is lost on America. Have you noticed? We have become stronghold of devils our enemies claim and this criminal justice is ugly proof. This system is a gauge of national spiritual immaturity. It portrays value we place on soul or spirit. It is an Old World relic of barbarity that needs serious reform.

Government schools don't identify and support neglected and abused children and wasted lives become object of corrupted government. Government sweeps its social mistakes into Graybar hotels, out of public sight, out of public mind. It's a non issue. The public neither knows nor cares. Let's outlaw criminal justice. Let's outlaw public ignorance.

The other camp wants to rehabilitate criminals but can seldom raise needed economic support to initiate and evaluate rehabilitation programs. These are folks who know that no life is beyond redemption or incapable of productive work.

Rehabilitation has failed so often because it rests on idea of stripping every right from a person, throwing them in a cage, isolating them from larger society and destroying any sense of personal identity or value. Treating people worse than animals is not conducive to self improvement. Rehabilitation must begin by not caging non violent offenders. House arrest, victim restitution, fines, counseling and work habilitation will prove much less expensive to society than caging and produce a better outcome.

Anti social behavior grows out of confusion and misidentification. That is, anti social people believe they are someone different than who they are at their core. They are books judged by their covers; judged by people only interested in covers. They come to believe and behave as though they are covers others have created for them. They are products of other people's expectations and imaginations as so many of us are. Unfortunately, expectations of many role models were low and easy to fulfill. Let society help victims of low expectations to distinguish between who they are and who they have been told they are. This explains their confusion to them and alleviates it. Clearing this confusion makes good candidates for rehabilitation.