From a Scandinavian viewpoint, the US prison system looks like the 19th century in many ways. I have no problem with that, longer sentences for repeat offenders with many crimes would be better than rebates(!) on prison time, like in Sweden.

Point is, I'm not that judgmental and still I say: Not trying to rehabilitate prisoners so they have good job skills is obviously insane. And totally immoral.

More of the prisoners will fail when released; do drugs, commit crimes and end up back in prison. This costs an insane lot of money (prison costs, people not working, health bills, etc). Even worse, it will also destroy the lives of innocent people -- e.g. crime victims and relatives of the prisoners.

I can only see two reasons for not putting an emphasis on rehabilitation for job skills: Pure incompetence -- or some economic interest in getting repeat offenders back into prison.

tl; dr: No rehabilitation of job skills hurts the economy and innocent people as much as the prisoners. Add extra time to the punishment if more punishment is merited, instead of shooting society in the foot.