Jail is supposed to be a deterrent to wrongdoing. I don’t think that is going about it the right way. If something is wrong to do, you shouldn’t do it anyway, whether or not you would go to jail for doing it. And if it is the right thing to do, you should do it even if you’d go to jail for it, on principle. That is, right and wrong exist independent of rewards or punishments.
You might imagine a situation where an authority figure says, “You may kill innocent women and children.” But just because an authority figure says that it is okay to murder innocents, that does not make it actually permissible.
Likewise, an authority figure might say, “It is wrong to give a hungry man a quarter to help him afford a meal.” But if you can spare a 25 cents and it really does help the hungry man to eat, then what you have done is not wrong even if an authority figure says that it is.
Right and wrong are not to be dictated; our morals are real things that exist somewhere outside of being issued by fiat. So what are we putting people in jails for? To cast them aside where they do nobody — neither themselves nor society — any good?
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