crime and punishment

     The prison system has been called by several euphemisms over the years--the criminal justice system, the penal system, the penitentiary, the department of corrections--but most of them are awful. The names given the prison system show the philosophy current at the time they were introduced. The penal system is where we punish wrongdoers. The penitentiary is where criminals may repent of their crimes. The criminal justice system is where "justice" is meted out. The department of corrections is where behavior, and, to some, morals, are corrected. To me, none of these really describe or define what's needed if criminals are ever going to be a part of law-abiding, tax-paying, self-supporting society.  We need something more like a bureau of restitution.  While it's popular to say that criminals in prison are "paying their debt to society" this does not actually happen. Crime costs society money, and so does the prison system--along with  the probation and parole systems. Criminals might walk out of prison ready to lead law-abiding lives if they knew that they had, in fact, paid their debts. I'm suggesting a system in which prisoners or probationers are made to work, and some of the money goes to restitution for their crimes--including murder, as in the ancient legal custom of the wergild.  The wergild was a set price on the murder of a person, paid to the family of the victim. In medieval times the price was determined by rank, which we could alter to age, perhaps. A higher price could be set on the death of a child, with no notion of rank.  Burglary, larceny, and property damage  are obvious--the criminal would be free when the debt is paid. For other crimes, we could start out with what they cost--hospital bills, lost wages, and disability payments. A system like this could actually work--for society and for the criminals.