I fully agree with what you mentioned about alternatives because we also have an open prison here in my country. I got the chance to visit that prison and you can never tell it is a prison if you were not told beforehand. It is a very wide farm where prisoners are not in prison but are free to till the farm for as long as they can. While talking to one of the locals there, he was saying that there are even many of the prisoners who do not want to be freed from there so they stayed. However, those are for lighter crimes or those who have served long enough that their sentence has been lightened.
How about heinous crimes? How about repeat offenders? Are we also going to put them in something like the open jail? While I agree that indeed punishment may cause more harm than good, I am still not in the position to fully oppose it when I do not have any proposed alternative. As they say, "If you oppose something then give a valid and reasonable alternative. If you can't give an alternative, you have to go with it."
RE: STEEMIT Openmic Week 106 - Gente (ORIGINAL) - Benjamín Mora