The meaning of the sentence

Prison "de-socialises people, takes responsibility away from them and creates multiple breaks or exacerbates already existing ones"

Four years after making this observation, the EESC felt it was necessary to look at the subject again, from a different angle: a debate on what society, victims and defendants expect from sentencing cannot be avoided. In this new opinion, the EESC draws on an in-depth analysis of sentencing patterns and questions 
the way penal policies have been conducted to date. Lastly, it identifies priorities in the design and application of sentences to give them meaning. 

Prison should no longer be the automatic sentence.

The EESC has put forward 19 recommendations to "give the justice system the means to act quickly and better while allowing it to take the time, depending on the situation, to assess whether the sentence is the most appropriate, better understood and more effective in reducing recidivism and promoting reintegration".