I think you would be very interested to read about the Norwegian prison Bastoy. It's situated on an island and has strikingly different conditions from what we imagine as prison; no cells, a natural environment, and various educational, craft, and leisure pursuits for the prisoners.

Most interestingly, it typically serves as a transitional prison, where people who have spent longer sentences at traditional maximum security prisons are sent for the last several years of a sentence. I think this is such a crucial thing that the American system is missing. Rather than the sudden jarring transitions of life to miserable subjugation and back, the qualities of imprisonment should gradually shift in a way that has prisoners functioning as healthy human beings with skills and prospectsbefore being released into society.