You ever stop to consider why that is though? In large part, it's because we set them up to fail; we make things so difficult for felons that many of them end up having to choose between staying on the up and up, and becoming a criminal again just to survive.
This is ignorant of basic human psychology.
The basic reason so many people reoffend, is because once you cross a line in the choices you make, it becomes easier to cross that line again. If you cross that line
repeatedly, and many violent criminals do before they actually get arrested and convicted, then it's
much easier to cross that line again.
That isn't to say that social stigma and legal fallout don't contribute in some cases. They certainly can, and sometimes do.
But the root issue isn't 'society is so nasty to me,' it's that it's very hard to change the direction of your life once you've been going a certain way for a long time.
On top of that, people with the sort of character to commit violent crimes, tend not to have the kind of determination and dedication to drastically change. I say 'tend not to' and actually mean it; some of the people who commit violent crimes, it was genuinely a serious break from their regular character, and some who do have generally poor self-restraint and judgement
do actually change drastically as people.
But overall, the primary reason is personal choice, not societal pressure.
There's a reason we treat someone desperate who actually goes and steals bread from a convenience or grocery store very differently than we treat a druggie who uses a gun to rob the cash register for drug money.
