School or Prison
As someone who&#x27;s been to prison and school, lots of comments here sound pretty tone deaf. Prison in the USA is really bad. Yes school is authoritarian, but most popular entertainment on prisons downplays how bad it really gets. Watch some interviews of people who have actually been to prison. Murder and rape is common (I saw it happen), you will get your possessions stolen under the threat of murder&#x2F;rape, you&#x27;ll probably spend 10-30% of your time in solitary confinement for reasons outside your control (torture according to human rights groups: I&#x27;ve been there, I&#x27;d prefer nonpermanent torture), you have to learn violence and get into fights with people who might be carrying a knife or else get taken advantage of indefinitely, ... It&#x27;s bad. And psychologically, you have no freedom whatsoever: no you cannot poop or drink water whenever you want to. You can only poop when your cellie isn&#x27;t around (1-2h&#x2F;day). You will be abused by prison staff (false accusations, physical abuse, food deprivation, ..)<p>The whole thing is an abomination. It serves no useful purpose to society to subject most criminals to prison: it doesn&#x27;t serve as a deterrent (based on talking to ~50 prisoners about this), it only radicalizes them further against &quot;the system&quot;, making it easier for them to break further laws.<p>Why don&#x27;t we have more outrage against this outdated institution created out of 1600 era values?<p>The amount of human suffering it creates... It&#x27;s astounding. Most prisoners would probably rather a super old school punishment like chopping off their arm over the prison sentence they get. And it would be more effective.