Once upon a time various bleeding hearts tried to promote the idea that prisons weren't really merely punitive, or shouldn't be at any rate, nor mere retribution. Oh no, they expounded, they should be (and some of the more deluded claimed they actually were) rehabilitative. For a while there were efforts made to actually infuse a tiny slice of rehabilitative endeavors into our jails and prisons. Then, since it was really fiction and wishful thinking, if faded and prisoners were again openly seen as merely suffering their just punishment, which included being used as a source of free or abysmally cheap labor.
Perhaps that may be changing at least a little in at least one locale.