I found that when trying to use Python with the "stow" utility, that it incorrectly hard codes the full DESTDIR path into python, instead of the relative portion of the DESTDIR path.  As a result, DESTDIR usage is fundamentally broken in relation to all other software packages I've ever built.  For example:

make install DESTDIR=/usr/local/stow/python-3.3.2

results in a sys.path that includes /usr/local/stow/python-3.3.2, when instead what is desired is just "/usr/local", so you can properly stow the package:

[quanah@git Python-3.3.2]$ python3
Python 3.3.2 (default, Dec 12 2013, 17:18:31)
[GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-3)] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sys
>>> print(sys.path)
['', '/usr/local/stow/python-3.3.2/lib/python33.zip', '/usr/local/stow/python-3.3.2/lib/python3.3', '/usr/local/stow/python-3.3.2/lib/python3.3/plat-linux', '/usr/local/stow/python-3.3.2/lib/python3.3/lib-dynload', '/usr/local/stow/python-3.3.2/lib/python3.3/site-packages']

Python itself was correctly built with --prefix=/usr/local, as that is the desired prefix.