Prisons should be maintain, rape and violence ate not inherent in prison, they are a failure of the system to reguslsye itself.

Sadly the real world demonstrates otherwise. Go look up the Stanford prison experiment. Abuse, torture, exploitation, etc. are inherent results of situations where a group of people is given power over a population, such as in a prison

One of the issue with recidivism is that you don't give the punished a means to dig themselves out of the hole they are put in, making prisons without councelling or an eye towards rehabilitation as net negative as blinding a man.

One, rehabilitation isn't a magic panacea; two, it's not the state's place to force people to go into therapy to essentially be brainwashed into accepting a mindset the state wants them to have (how is that not like being mutilated on the inside exactly?); three, court-ordered therapy programs are often unconstitutional, such as sending people to A.A. which is a religious organization that forces its members to convert to Christianity to pass the program, and are usually money-making mills.

Also this discussion has nothing to do with recidivism. This discussion is about the merits and morality of certain types of punishment, not recidivism at all. However, if the claim you made: "The man will either need state benefits or will simply be gimped in aiding society going further." is true, then by that logic this man will be unable to commit any more crimes anyway, rendering any discussion about recidivism moot.

You are commit this act of 'justice' using those who are meant to help the injured, not cause injury.

The state's job isn't to help people, it's to serve as a monopoly of the use of force. Honestly on this note I agree with you -- I don't want the state around at all specifically because their monopoly on violence makes them an all-powerful Cthulu-level dominating force over us all that takes away our lives, our happiness, and our dreams. But just because the state is evil doesn't make something like the punishment given to this guy any more evil. I stand by my claim that this is a case of the state actually being merciful for once.