I disagree. I don't think 'hard time' should necessarily be 'hard'. If someone isn't safe enough to have on the street then locking them away for ten or twenty years causing them pain and suffering isn't going to make the person any more sociable. The time a person is locked up should be spent actively trying to rehabilitate the person: education, job training, counseling, medical care, the kinds of things that may actually lead to the criminal becoming a useful member of society when he gets out. Currently jails are Lawbreaking School, with prisons as the master class in Organized Crime. I know people who went into juvie, county jail, or state penitentiaries for making a dumb mistake and came out as hardened criminals. We should be trying to reverse that trend rather than further it.

I'm also very leery of stripping more rights than necessary away from criminals. It's a slippery slope from child murderers to murderers to carjackers to thieves to vandals. It's very difficult to define a fair line between the "you should be punished" crime and the "you're fucked forever" crime. And what about fairness? Do we really want to say that punishment should be more severe for killing a 17-year-old than an 18-year-old?