@CityHunter: That's my point. Jails should be used for punishment and not for holidays!!
I used to think so too, but that's not the best strategy if you look deeper into it.
Surprisingly, punishment is not the main goal of crimial law - it's prevention of crimes.
If the life in jail is not too bad, less people get there more than once.
The main reasons are:
1. They don't feel humiliated, so they don't hate everyone else.
2. They still feel like they are part of the society, the bad kids being punished by their elder friends. In Sweden, I think, some prisoners can even spend weekends with their families at home so that they have better chance to get to normal life once they are freed.
3. If their life is fine, less people who meet in a jail will form gangs.
There might be more reasons, but Im not really into crimial law. Anyway,I think you got the idea