Aren't prisons supposed to be like that? In my perception, the goal of prison is exactly that: be like hell so other people are afraid of getting there enough so they don't commit crime? Someone who's already into prison for a long term is lost anyway, he or she will be criminalized for life. And this is why prison terms should be mostly binary: we should try to either punish someone with something short of that, or if not, lock him up for long enough he either never makes it out of there, or does it old enough so he's not tuu much of a threat anymore.