What Is Wrong with "Prison?"

A favorite columnist, Jay Nordlinger of National Review Online, pays attention to our shared language - English. Writing about a visit to a prison, he comments:

People have come up with various euphemisms for prisons. We call them rehabilitation centers, but no one is ever rehabilitated. We call them correctional facilities, but no one is ever corrected. We call them penitentiaries, but no one is ever penitent.

We need a name that describes what prisons actually do for us: separate bad people from nice people and create an unpleasant experience for the imprisoned. If we must have a euphemism, we might call them "incarceration centers or isolation facilities."