Do Christian's think putting people in prison is a waste of money and why?

Answer 1

The problem of society's misbehavers has troubled religious and nonreligious people down the ages. Very early societies couldn't afford prisons, so punishment was typically either banishment or some form of pain infliction / mutilation. Christians often found these punishments cruel, and on the hypothesis that most wrongdoers should have a chance to repent their sins, established "penitentiaries" where people could stay, more or less voluntarily, to reflect on their behavior.

The idea of shutting malcontents up seemed like a good substitute for banishment when frontiers began to close, and the "penitent" portion of the incarceration was lost to the more emotionally satisfying notions of punishment and suffering. Christian reformers sporatically intervened, protesting the truly horrible conditions of some prisons and the philosophy shifted, officially, to "rehabilitation."

National opinions usually dictate prison conditions. By report, Swiss prisons are models of the rehabilitation concept, while French prisons are pretty much hellholes by comparison.

Most prison programs ARE a waste of money in the sense that they neither effectively rehabilitate nor effectively punish criminals, so such Christians as oppose them on the grounds of waste are correct. (Obviously, not all Christians think exactly alike; some are for more punishment, others more repentance.)

The problem with prisons, or, as we now say, "correctional systems," is that to do rehabilitation right takes far more money than people who aren't currently in prison are willing to spend.