By their nature – and human nature – and no matter how humanely we attempt to administer them, prisons are pretty brutal and dehumanizing. Even juvenile detention facilities for nonviolent children who we decide have to be segregated from society for some reason, which one would think would be as humanely run as possible, develop along the lines of the discredited (but still valid as a basic object lesson) Stanford Prison Experiment. Guards become vicious and brutal, inmates develop gangs and a caste system, and violence among inmates and between guards and inmates (and, I would suspect, among guards’ families as well) is commonplace. Accepted, even. This, to me, is intolerable.
So whatever can be done to alleviate that is going to improve the situation somewhat. While I favor the idea of segregating and limiting the freedom of certain humans who have committed certain crimes against others, I do not believe that we should accept “well, prison is violent, and that’s what they get for what they did” and “if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime” status quo bullshit.
On the other hand, I do believe in fair exchange, too. So I do find it outrageous that we supply better entertainment options to prisoners than I can afford, and for no exchange on the part of the prisoners. If we can find a way for the prisoners to do something nominally useful – even if it involves only something as mundane as attending classes and improving their own education as their “exchange” – (note that I’m also not a fan of prison slave labor, before someone thinks I’m on that slippery slope), then I would be in favor of that.
I do not believe in giving prisoners what they want “just because they want it and may cause problems if they don’t get it”. That’s not the kind of exchange that I have in mind. That’s the attitude that got them into prison in the first place, isn’t it?