Having gone to prison really looks like a modern 3/5ths compromise. It's like pulling teeth to get people to not dehumanize inmates, consider why they do (or didn't do, in the case of false conviction) what they do, and overcome a primal-seeming eye-for-an-eye urge to retaliate, ignoring that they're just causing people to keep doing the things they don't like once they get out, inflicting traumas that weren't there before. Not being able to vote and the difficulties people face working after the fact are endless avalanches of cherries on top. As someone belonging to multiple marginalized groups and visibly so, I fear I do not have enough social currency to spend in the case that I wrongfully get caught up in my country's "justice" system.

I hypothesize that it is a tiny fraction of people currently receiving life without the possibility of parole who truly need to be separated from society for good and that the vast majority can be salvaged. That's not to mention the whole slew of arbitrarily defined victimless crimes that waste prison cell space, such as the war on drugs.