Really? Calling non-prison alternatives to incarceration "realistic", saying prisons are "ineffectual", and questioning the whole idea of prisons doesn't suggest to you he doesn't believe criminals should be imprisoned?
Uh huh.
Meanwhile, how about you address Zinn's other lies?
The opinions you paraphrased above are all values statements, therefore are neither true nor false, therefore cannot be lies.
I suspect this sort of confusion is where all of your errors about Zinn are coming from. You are confusing values opinions with which you disagree, with lies. The only way that a values statement can be a lie is if the person making it doesn't actually hold that value. For example, if I were to say, "Women who get abortions deserve to be in prison," that would be a lie, not because it's factually wrong (it's not making a factual statement ans so is neither true nor false), but because it's claiming a belief that I don't actually hold.
So unless you think that Zinn really believes that criminals SHOULD be imprisoned, that is not a lie.