Frankly, yes.

I mean, we don't have to be talking about the local country club. Any YMCA is going to have these. (Since we're talking specifically about swimming pools and tennis courts, I happen to know of several in my town that are free.) And there are programs for lower income folks to assist with fees, as well as access to mental health care. It's really not as impractical as you're suggesting.

But this is a tangent from my original point, which is that as a society, we owe it to ourselves to ensure that the people we remove from society for a time don't make things worse for themselves or us when they come home. That means changing our collective attitude. Discussions like ours are part of that evolution.

I think where you and I have an opportunity to come to further agreement is find common ground on the definitions of "comfortable" and "nice." See, I think prisons should, in fact, have swimming pools and tennis courts. But I also don't think of them as luxuries. I think of them as necessities - because attending to one's mental health means more than weekly visits to a shrink or going to group. It's also finding good outlets for stress, and because people are individuals, it's logical to offer as many recreational and creative outlets as can be practical. And I really don't think I'm suggesting anything that's out of reach for any working class citizen.

More than that, though, and for better for for worse, prisoners live in a community of their own. The more reflective that community is of society in general, the more well-adjusted they'll be, which I believe will lead to lower recidivism, and maybe - just maybe - begin to transform the US into a less violent culture. Not saying it'll happen overnight, obviously, but an evolution in that direction, starting with how we treat the people who break society's laws, can be a good thing.

In addition to this, what also needs to happen is a large-scale transformation of the American attitude towards incarcerated persons. We still widely regard the justice system as a form of retribution rather than rehabilitation. We relish the thought of prisoners languishing in the most uncomfortable conditions we can imagine, and we take it up with our politicians when we learn otherwise, who then pressure the prison systems to become less "cushy" and more like a medieval torture chamber.

The media did the biggest harm to the US Justice system in the 80's when they ran stories on the "luxurious" conditions of federal prisons, meant to incite outrage that these people were enjoying things like swimming pools, tennis courts, and other things we teach ourselves that they don't deserve. After that story ran, the federal prison system was pressured into shutting down many of those amenities, and discouraged from developing other ways to help rehabilitate. We can't have criminals living it up at "Club Fed" now, can we?This hurts the inmates, and in turn it hurts the staff of those prisons, and ultimately it hurts society when we release someone who isn't equipped to function and is facing a hostile community who feels that he hasn't been "punished" enough.

Exact same cabal of jackholes who go Y'aLl sTilL GoINg oN AbOut jAnUArY SixTH??