I have a good friend who's a guard at the state penn for over 20 years. Actually took my wife and I on a tour once.
Anyhow, his stance (and he has seen pretty much everything you can imagine, and a lot more) is that they are people. Yup, they're locked up, and some are real POS, but they are still people. Nearly all of them are going to be released some day, and you want them to be better when they get out, than when they went in.
If you simply lock them in a room for a year or two or ten or fifty, then let them go and figure they're all better, you got your head in the sand.
I'm all for keeping illegal things illegal, and stiff penalties, etc. But just putting them in a room for a long period of time, then letting them go? I'm told that that makes them worse.