Anybody who thinks prison is a cakewalk has only a superficial idea of what prison life is actually like. Without naming anybody, I know somebody very well who spent two years in prison for an accidental death. Not only did he have to live with his crime, but he said the psychological impact of not being able to do something as simple as going for a shower or making a sandwich when he wanted made him cry on an almost nightly basis. The things inmates get for "good behaviour" don't reflect on the life inside a prison. You're controlled and quashed from wake to sleep, in a building with people less psychologically stable and far more dangerous than you (depending on who you are of course). You don't see your family, your hygiene regimen is knackered and boredom sets in pretty quickly, which of course is the point.
You wouldn't pity people in prison, for obvious reasons, but don't for one second think that "oh they get a roof over their head, three meals, telly etc" and that makes it a piece of piss. You get those things in psychological wards and I can tell you, does it **** make it any easier. You try sleeping when the person two doors down spends most of the night going from laughing to crying to screaming to laughing over and over for hours on end.