The founding principle of the horizontal society has very different repercussions on the failure to observe rules.

As we have seen, the death penalty is absolutely incompatible with this organisation model. But prison, too, is not consistent with the principles of the horizontal society.

Prison compresses personal liberty (the freedom of movement, to nurture relationships with loved ones, to have contact with other people, to choose a real job, and so on) almost to the point of annihilating it and, in general, leads to the brutalisation of those who are confined there. Prison is the expression of a retributive, suffering-oriented view of punishment, one which clashes with a recognition of the individual's dignity. It constitutes an obstacle to the reintegration of convicts into society, and therefore to their ability to resume contributing towards harmonious communal life. Finally, prison does not achieve the ends it is used for: except for preventing those who are jailed from committing crimes (and only during their detention), it does not perform a specific preventive function, in that it does not contribute to preventing recidivism. Nor does it fulfil a general preventive function. In fact most of the time the threat of incarceration is not a deterrent to breaking rules. And, as we have seen, it is financially very expensive for a community.

Although the incompatibility between the horizontal model and prison (as exclusion and infliction of suffering) is plain to see, it seldom happens that a society, even when it is founded on the value and dignity of the individual, avoids choosing detention as a penalty for the breach of an almost unlimited number of rules. And it is just as rare that even those upholding the respect for the human person question the prison system and punishment in the literal meaning of the word. I speak from direct experience: apart from people who work in the field (quite a few actually), occasional enlightened minds, and some religious people, once you scratch the surface the belief emerges that prison, as it is now, cannot be done away with.

In my opinion, this depends above all on the deep roots of traditional culture in this particular area and, again, from the inability to see the history of humankind in its dynamic evolution.