Anyone who agrees with me is a wonderful person.
I personally say we should get rid of prisons in their entirety, but before you argue, hear(or read, lol) me out.
Their are better, alternative forms of punishment.
What is it that keeps a child in line? The timeout corner, or the wooden spoon? The principal or the switch?
What was it that kept Romans in line? The prisons or the Cross?
This is my point. Torture. Viscious, relentless, all of that. Sure, a short term county jail is fine for a day to a week, but longer than that...
Well, you reap what you sow. "The prisons are overcrowded, it's a weight on the budget," you say?
I'm sorry to disappoint, but we're going to need a few thousand more dollars to construct guillotines everywhere. Cheese grating the flesh of their arms(soaking the utensil with salted like juice as well)
For executions, the Guillotine is a bit too painless. Not enough deterrent.
A gallows, just replace the noose with a jagged hook and shove it through the soft flesh of the chin, waiting to rip off their jaws, and attack smaller cords to the eyelids, ears, nostrils, etc, then they fall into a puddle of salt and scream until death.
I have many, many other methods as well, but think about it-Who would run the risk of having to go through this? No one. But our PRISON system? Some of them eat better than us.
I hope you'll consider my thoughts, thank you for your time.

Titan127 : But what about a Thief? Someone stole $10... Are you going to hang him? That is why we have Prisons. Death Penalty is paying the Ultimate Price for your sin. We don't need to torture them to death, that's just wrong! 

darthyoda : That's where cheese graters come in. Please, it's not going to kill him...Most likely...
EDIT-Spelling errors were corrected..

Titan127 : I really think that you forget that the problem with prisons is that they don't do death penalty, if there is no one worse around a criminal, they won't be influenced in a bad way. It's that simple. The problem with excessive punishment/torture for a crime is that they won't repent and change their heart, they will become more violent towards those who are over them. 

Punishment is to drive them away from their wrong doings... Not to have personal gratification for their suffering, then one is no better than Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin. They took pleasure in the suffering of criminals. (Not only, but they did make them suffer along with the Jews and Gypsies etc.) I'm not saying that your doing that, but I'm trying to give you a perspective as to why it's wrong to give over excessive punishment, and things like that.

darthyoda : Actually, I am rather sadistic.
But you're missing the point, just as you believe I am.
If these things hang over you, are you going to commit them? And if it happens once, will you do it again?
Prisons don't change people"/ hearts. They normally live better than the common American. And their hearts won't change. If they resorted to those things before, they will do so again. Prisons have never worked, and they never will. Torture does and will.