chinangel said:
Therumancer said:
Well, one of the whole problems is that the focus on our prison system is too much on rehabilitation as opposed to punishment.
I wanted to comment on this part imparticular. You see, originally prison systems were exclusively on punishment, as harsh a punishment as could be doled out: human rights be damned.
The end result? Criminals came out more dangerous, more hardened, more amoral. By focusing on rehab you can prevent a criminal from re-offending, or at least that is the theory.
Besides, they already have been locked up: how much worse can it get? Daily beatings? Torture? Tazering?
The reason prisoners are provided internet, video games and other distractions is because sitting in a cell with nothing drives people literally insane and you get a person with violent tendencies alone with nothing but his thoughts and well...
Criminology, psychology and the like are why our jail system exists as it does, but hey on the other hand there are prisons almost exclusively punishment based.
Here in Canada a story broke in the last year or so about a prison where the prisoners were forced into fight clubs by the guards and warden. If they refused to participate or complained then their food was pissed on, they were beaten and attacked by the guards.
I also heard a story about prison in california that is so over-populated that they dont' have room. Cells are loaded until it's standing room only, prisoners locked in cages hanging from the ceiling (not cells, CAGES) and some just shackled to the ground in a hall because there isn't enough room for them.
Which one of these sounds like it will stop crime and which one sounds like it will promote it?
I disagree, because people coming out of country-club prisons re-offend as well. Indeed by giving criminals a free hand in many cases they simply train with other criminals to become better criminals. All the work outs, education, etc... oftentimes simply just create a new breed of scumbag that is harder to deal with. To be blunt I'd rather deal with the guy who was punished severely, than the dude who comes out of prison in better shape, with better contacts, and a better knowledge of law to play the system because the people there were willing to educate him.
To be fair I'm sort of a believe in the old "supercube" concept, which was an idea that was pretty much done away with for being "inhumane". That is simply that you put each prisoner into a little cube (I think it was 8' square, maybe 10') with a light on the ceiling, a bed on one side of the room that doubles as where you sit and lifts up to have a sink and toilet underneath it, and a TV/Viewscreen on one wall with a remote/controller chained to the wall next to it. The basic idea is you put everyone in the equivalent of solitary 24/7, no exercise beyond what you can do in the cell, and access to only approved material for "entertainment" on your internal TV screen, probably selected from a library of movies, TV shows, etc... donated to and approved by the prison authority. The books (in big letters up on the screen) are more viable today than when the idea first appeared, and honestly I'd even thin you might be able to put video games into the equasion as well given current trends.
The bottom line is you don't need to beat the hell out of some dude 24/7, you lock a guy in the "super cube" for a number of years, chances are when he finally gets out he'll do anything to avoid being put back in. The point of this kind of thing is that it cuts down on inter-prisoner violence, gang-activity, and becomes easier to control and monitor since there is no "general population" so to speak. What's more by being cut off, the prisoner isn't learning how to be a better criminal, and isn't pumping himself up into some muscle monster.
At the end of the day we're likely to disagree (I've mentioned this here before and people seriously disagreed with it, and I doubt it will be better received now), but the point is that I don't think you need to formalize routine beatings to handle things. What's more I think you could build and run "supercube" prisons far more effectively and keep them in line more easily, with much larger populations, than you do with the ones we have running now, which would help deal with the overcrowding problems.
To be honest I do not think the current prison system where we pretty much pat prisoners on the back, tell them it isn't really their fault, and basically try and bribe them into being better people is a good idea. I understand the principle, but I do not think it functions very well, especially when dealing with serious offenders.
What's more I'll also say that I'm speaking in a general sense here. To be honest I think there are some offenses that cannot be properly punished within the context of a humane prison system. A child rapist is one of those kinds of people, to be honest being brutalized by inmates (like tends to happen) has a sort of justice to it when it happens,
and it's also why you are seeing "Affluenza" kept out of prison like in this case. To be honest though I do kind of thing we might want to find a mechanism by which the protection against "cruel and unusual punishment" is suspended for certain kinds of offenses, and I think a rather unpleasant existence for these people should be mandated directly by law as opposed to leaving it in the hands of other inmates (unspoken punishment and a work around), and effectively letting people buy their way out of it like we're seeing here. I was six when I was sexually assaulted by a (much) older boy, I do not remember the event thankfully, but just knowing it happened makes me rather angry. This dude raped someone even younger... I suppose as a Christian I should be content to let god eventually sort him out but well... let's just say I'm a weak person I guess since I think we can do a *much* better job here on earth.
