= new reply since forum marked as read
You obviously have not learned that we teach people to respect "basic human dignity" by taking it away if they don't. 
I agree we basically everything you said with one exception.
I used to work in a "supermax" prison. For three years I worked in a unit divided with death row inmates on the one side and "high risk potential" disciplinary detention inmates on the others. The unit was set up this way because death row inmates, at least in that system and state, were largely maintenance and trouble free, which allowed more time to deal with those on the other side.
The HRP inmates were a special case, and one that it is important to understand.
There are a good number of people in prison who are simply evil. I understand that some would like to pretend that this is not the case, but the reality is that it is true. I do not believe that this label applies to most inmates, even many who are convicted of murder, but it is a mistake to believe that it does not exist. There are some, however, who go WAY beyond this. There are some people who are not only evil, not only violent, but absolutely brilliant (or otherwise "gifted" as well. In my state's prison system, housing many tens of thousands of inmates, we had about twenty people who fell into this category. It is these men I want to tell you about.
These are men who devote every waking hour of the day towards one thought only: they want to kill ANYONE and EVERYONE they can. They will spend days, weeks, months, watching for repeated mistakes, for any pattern they can exploit, thinking of nothing but how they can main or kill. And again, and this is critical to understand, these people were -- almost to a man -- absolutely brilliant. They are people smart enough to figure out how to turn mac and cheese into an explosive, and then figure out how to get it into the cell next to theirs. Smart enough, and patient enough, to devote months towards studying what made people tick, and how to exploit it.
These men were kept in what amounted to a steel box. Think solid door, no gaps even on the bottom. None the less, I am not exaggerating when I say that there were many officers who quit before spending even a single day in that unit. It was always very dangerous. I understand that this is hard to believe, but there it is. You simply cannot understand how LETHAL people can be until you encounter a sociopathic genius. When a smart person turns their entire mind and purpose for living to murder, heaven help you if you are anywhere in the vicinity.
These are men who MUST be kept in the closest isolation possible. If you have ever worked with them you would understand.
Understand as well that all of us assigned to work with these guys (and there were not many) did everything in our power to treat them with respect, courtesy, and as much kindness and compassion as we possibly could. Even when, as so often happened, someone on our team got creamed by one of these guys, no one EVER retaliated or treated these monsters in anything less than a professional manner. Not that I ever saw, and if I had that officer would have been gone immediately. We didn't tolerate that nonsense at all.
Anyway, YES, I agree with much of what you say. But there is an exception. For every ten or twenty thousand inmates, there is that one exception. And any plan for reform should keep that in mind.
This OP is the best I have seen in a while. 
