Prisonalized Correctionalized Instituioned

What is the purpose of a prison? Using the politically correct term, the question is supposedly answered: Correctional Facility. Ideally, it is a place where we send those whom we imagine not fit to live among other humans in the hopes that they will be reformed into fully functional members of society. Nearly half of all prisoners end up being re-arrested once they are released. And with the United States leading the world in prisoners per percent of population, you know something is not working the way it is supposed to. But how can we reform prisons in an effective manner? I would like to bring up the novel 1984. People who did not fit in with society were tortured and brainwashed until they did. When they were returned to society, they functioned as a model citizen, but they were no longer the same person. They're very character and personality were destroyed in the process of making them fit in with society. The cause of this was because society saw their personality itself, their way of thinking and rational, as a flawed and abnormal ideology. What, then, is to keep a person from saying that there is no way to change a criminal since being a criminal is part of who they are? Maybe more later.