A cursory examination of crime and its causal factors will poignantly reveal that "punishment" should not be the function of a CORRECTIONAL system.
Crime exists when at least some portion of the population either must resort to "out of bounds" means to sustain themselves, or when such methods are faster and easier than legitimate means. (such as when lawyers run everything, and you have to sign a 50 page affidavit to get a glass of water, excluding the local water works from any and all legal reprisals or blame for any conditions that might arise from drinking that glass of water, including but not limited to, drowning, poisoning, or allergic reaction-- Or less bombastically, when there are real and purposefully enacted barriers to entry into "accepted society", which is true both for trade obstructing legal bodies, and for harsh restrictions on immigration from less developed countries.)
"Tough on crime" is an absurdity. "tough on recidivism" would be a much better goal, but that assumes that you combat the recidivism through reform of both criminals and the system that creates them, such that the crimes cease happening with such frequency, and not via the greedy-ai method of killing all criminals on sight so that they cannot commit more crimes.