Incarceration plays three roles (to varying degrees of success): punishment (and therefore deterrent), rehabilitation and exclusion from society.
One group of people would prefer focusing on rehabilitation rather than punishment, and are likely those who oppose solely serving vegan food to prisoners. Another group of people sees prisoners as no longer human and deserving of moral concern, and think that the cruelty of prison is the point.
The US prison system leans more towards the latter than the former (see: mandatory prison labor), though other places in the world lean differently. How far and in what direction prison systems should lean is a topic for philosophical debate.
Though also note that degree of punishment doesn’t really correlate with deterrence from crime (review Apel and Nagin (2011), tl;dr: more about certainty of getting caught, it’s complicated)
Incarceration plays three roles (to varying degrees of success): punishment (and therefore deterrent), rehabilitation and exclusion from society.
One group of people would prefer focusing on rehabilitation rather than punishment, and are likely those who oppose solely serving vegan food to prisoners. Another group of people sees prisoners as no longer human and deserving of moral concern, and think that the cruelty of prison is the point.
The US prison system leans more towards the latter than the former (see: mandatory prison labor), though other places in the world lean differently. How far and in what direction prison systems should lean is a topic for philosophical debate.
Though also note that degree of punishment doesn’t really correlate with deterrence from crime (review Apel and Nagin (2011), tl;dr: more about certainty of getting caught, it’s complicated)