Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired)

I discussing my personal feelings on the matter the point of prison is to remove the
individual from society. Not for the sake of the prisoner, but for the sake of society.
Rehabilitation or punishment are secondary to removing the person committing illegal acts from
society. Of course it's hoped that in allowing the person back out that they will have learned
a lesson but I highly doubt you could prove that very many (if any at all) rehabilitation
programs have lower recidivism rates than the general prison population. Every scientific,
rather than anecdotal, study I have seen shows there is no correlation between recidivism and
"rehabilitation" programs and that return rate is the same in almost every study.  

Someone else pointed to USA recidivism rates and tried to infer the Europe is better in this
regard than the US because of softer sentencing, this is while neglecting that the numbers are
almost identical in both jurisdictions. First time offenders are about 60% likely to
re-offend, of re-offenders 90% will re-offend again after the 2nd prison term. This has led to
the idea of the three strikes system in some states because it keeps the people that will
re-offend in prison rather than releasing them to commit more crime.