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Much more will be needed before the penal system can be called even tolerable. That day is not likely to come until the public stops thinking of prison as a symbol and begins coldly assessing what prisons can and cannot accomplish. A good deal of expert thought has already been devoted to the question. In 1973, for instance, the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals concluded a sober review with this recommendation: "Prisons should be repudiated as useless for any purpose other than locking away persons who are too dangerous to be allowed at large in a free society."
That idea makes more sense every day. The path to its fulfillment, involving the whole justice system, would no doubt be long, halting and difficult. It might be expensive, but probably less so than building even more prisons. Still, there is no reason to suppose that it would be utterly impossible. After all, America, repelled by bodily punishments such as maiming and branding, invented the penitentiary two centuries ago as a reform. That suggests, if nothing else, that the country might be capable at long last of inventing a sensible use for the thing.
—Frank Trippett