Prison System Issues/Discussion

I'm starting this thread because I didn't want to derail the "RIP UK Justice" thread. One of the posts in that thread reads as follows:

Quote:

Originally Posted by angrysoba (Post 11845645) Yes, and that is certainly one of the problems of the US prison system. Essentially, anyone who is unpopular enough with the hardest elements of the prison will be punished by the other prisoners. This incentivizes gangs and the hardening of relatively inexperienced criminals. I think the US penal system is utterly atrocious.

This makes a lot of sense to me. Forcing people into tough, abusive environments seems like a good way to make those people tougher and more abusive. Of course, I don't actually know a lot about this issue (plenty of anecdotes, no personal experience or proper data) so I'm making a lot of assumptions. Is any prison system in the US currently trying a "softer" approach to the prison environment? What kind of results are they getting?

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