A better approach would be to reform the prison system to focus on rehabilitation and treating prisoners like human beings rather than cattle. Norway's prison system is like this, and they not only have a very low rate of re-offense, but Norwegian prisons (and the prisons in other Nordic countries, I believe) are very safe.
But of course, this doesn't matter, because most Americans care more about bullsh#t philosophy on whether or not prisoners
deserve more than slop that wouldn't even be served in an elementary school cafeteria. And then there's the classic "oh, don't use a European country as an example! America's different!" line.