How Do We Behave?

[Napoléon]

Interesting on your 1st point Nap... I was talking with a local historian earlier who was telling me about a visit to the northern UK cotton mills by some US Slave owners, including George Washington he thinks. At the sight of the children forced to crawl under the looms to clear lint (that would often cause fatalities) they commented on how much better they treated their own slaves.

This relates to my first point how?
I think you meant second.
I'm sure you can find some examples of prisoners being treated horrendously in the modern world, and I could easily find examples equalling such maltreatment for slaves. It's not really the point, fact is slaves were treated like shit, and whilst prisoners might be treated on equal ground on some examples on the whole slavery is on a different level to modern imprisonment.

I'm not suggesting slavery is a good thing, and neither is the bible.

Frodo if you honestly believe this then why don't you question why the bible just doesn't say slavery shouldn't be allowed in the first place?
You can say that it's because of the times when it was written but that is just cherry picking, because the bible says not to kill, not to steal etc. Why is slavery not on the same ground?
Like I said do you condone slavery now? Would you condone it if you existed two thousand years ago?

Prisoners prefer to be inside because we adopt biblical standards of forgiveness in our penal systems. I don't think it quite works because secular society doesn't work to religious moral standards. Hence the mismatch between public opinion and judicial rulings.

We don't adopt 'biblical standards' at all. We adopt HUMAN standards.