What is the point of keeping non-violent offenders in jail/prison? Jail isn’t rehabilitation, it’s punitive, so they’re not learning anything useful and could possibly come out worse than they were when they went in as a result of trying to learn to survive in a prison environment. Some people may be saying, well, the point of jail is to be punitive. I think, ideally, it should be giving a person skills to not do what they did before, reduce the rate of recidivism, and stop the revolving door of people unable to cope with life outside jail so they commit another crime to get back in. The taxpayers are paying for this. Non-violent crimes are best dealt with a shorter sentence and some sort of rehabilitation.