put them to work
The trouble with putting them to work is that they can undercut just about any other labor costs. If you were out of work at the office furniture plant because the prison up the road is now making say office furniture for a lot less then you can, I doubt that you would find that an acceptable solution. Letting slave labor undercut free labor is never a good idea.
And I'm not that down on cable TV. Hell, I worked for years and years teaching at prisons, mostly basic government classes, but I also taught reading - like first grade, Cat in the Hat reading. And given what I saw inside - none of which is the sort of luxury vacation you're describing - I'd much rather have them watching TV and eating some Homer Simpson diet and all of them coming out looking like the comic book guy in the Simpson's instead of lifting weights and working out and coming out looking like the Hulk.
There are serious problems in the American Criminal Justice System, which is certainly American, definitely a system and very, very criminal - but has very little justice. Due to rabid right wingers who demanded extra punishment for their 'special' crimes (mostly drug related offenses) with no judicial discretion (mandatory minimums), and the tendency to add 'new' crimes, with very heavy penalties we have a very weird skewing. So, its possible for someone to say give/sell a 17 year old girl crack cocaine, and wind up serving a longer sentence than if you had raped and killed her in a lot of places.
Moreover, a good 50-70% of the prisoners currently incarcerated (and the US has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, far above 'police states' like China) are in there for non-violent drug related infractions. There has got to be a better, and less expensive, way of dealing with them.
