You know, I always adore these rants. People are so cute when they're trying to demand cruel vengeance.
But, I'll tell you what: The first thing we need to do is strike the words "rehabilitation" and "correctional" from our prison culture. As it is, being an American, I come from a place where these words are mere window dressing. You know, the kind of thing you say so the jailers can feel like they're not dangerous psychopaths.
Having struck rehabilitation and correction from the discussion, we can focus on what prisons are really about—incarcerating people and making them miserable.
Having admitted this, we can then acknowledge the reality: There is no point in letting these people out of jail, since all we've done is pissed them off and made them more dangerous.
Recognizing that, we see two possibilities. First, a cultural experiment in which we simply try to torture people back into line. Second, a death factory in which we simply mill people toward the injection room.
And once we are capable of considering the discussion in terms of vendetta and bloodlust, which is all those "waah! they have color TVs!" arguments really are, and accept that arguments such as yours are really nothing more than neurotic complexes—sure, you want to dish out all the brutality and cruelty that criminals "deserve", but since it's through the device of the state, we should also pretend that it isn't brutal cruelty because otherwise it might sound like you're one of the kind of people that should be cruelly brutalized by a penal system—then, yes, we can actually have a real discussion about crime and punishment.
Until then, your hogwash argument describes itself.
