Poll: Should prison serve as punishment, or should it be used for rehabilitation instead?

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Leg End

Romans 12:18
Oct 24, 2010
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Arawn.Chernobog said:
Atm it's just an isolation+Crime School institution.

I say the entire concept is flawed and outdated by this point and we should consider new methods of dealing with crime.
Such as placing their minds into a Matrix like world for rehabilitation. Willingly, of course.
 

Bassman_2

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Feb 9, 2009
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As the first person said, I believe prison is a punishment and torture should be used.
Why kill murderers and rapists now when they can suffer more painfully for years? Death is too easy, in my opinion.
 

[.redacted]

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Jan 24, 2010
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The Stonker said:
Niagro said:
Prison costs a lot of money, and a lot of time.
I also don't believe that the system is fair, if someone can kill someone and still get to live their life.

Execution and mutilation on the other hand...
The process of legal costs of sending a man to death is higher then keeping him for life in a prison.
I believe that we should use prisoners as slaves.
That is a good option, providing the cost of keeping them is balanced, and there is a sufficient amount of manual labor for them to do without displacing normal laborers.

Also, the legal costs of execution would have to be drastically reduced.
 

Penguinness

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Punishment is only really getting revenge for the vitcim, without this it's just a lazy man's rehabilitation. Whether someone should have one or the other is entirely subjective. Is revenge needed? A bit, in my opinion.

There's been a lot of news recently about pedophilia incidents, some people believe no amount of rehab will help and full punishment should be administrated. In that perticular case it was arguable whether or not the victim was a victim, another subjective matter.. and so to me it should be purely about the rehab. Doing something that leaves someone physically or mentally hurt desveres a slight weight of punishment, but that's just me. You could claim that every crime has a victim, and so the punishment is always needed.
 

jpoon

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I would say many of them should be rehabilitated, many should be killed, and many should be just locked the fuck away for the rest of their lives. I think it should be a case-by-case basis. The total deviants and sociopaths should not be rehabilitated.
 

Mr Montmorency

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People commit crime because they have no other option. There's no punishment or rehabilitation involved here. All they're doing is locking someone up then releasing them after a set amount of time. Absolutely nothing is solved by that. They'll end up committing crime again because it's the next best thing after being a homeless fucking drug addict.

They could get rid of the cause of crime, such as inequality or mental health, they should also stop locking people up for putting chemicals into their own bodies. The reason why they won't do that is because prisons and police departments have a lot of jobs going for them, and politicians rely on the controversy of the drugs war to one up each other. The lack of concern for the people they lock up is seriously concerning. They should help them, not imprison them.
 

SkyeNeko

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i dont think rehab helps someone who steals for money. or who kills cause blood is such a pretty color. they did something wrong, they need to be punished first, rehabilitated next.
 

Leg End

Romans 12:18
Oct 24, 2010
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Bassman_2 said:
As the first person said, I believe prison is a punishment and torture should be used.
Why kill murderers and rapists now when they can suffer more painfully for years? Death is too easy, in my opinion.
But... then, depending on the crime, they would be suffering more than the victim.

An Eye For An Eye helps no one. Especially in the case when it's several limbs for an eye.
 

Thaluikhain

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Niagro said:
The process of legal costs of sending a man to death is higher then keeping him for life in a prison.
I believe that we should use prisoners as slaves.
That is a good option, providing the cost of keeping them is balanced, and there is a sufficient amount of manual labor for them to do without displacing normal laborers.[/quote]

In various places such as in the US, they already use prisoners as slave labourers.

Well, ok, as I understand it they choose to work and are perfectly free not to if they'd prefer to stay in solitary confinement for the length of their sentence instead.
 

Leg End

Romans 12:18
Oct 24, 2010
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Mr Montmorency said:
People commit crime because they have no other option. There's no punishment or rehabilitation involved here. All they're doing is locking someone up then releasing them after a set amount of time. Absolutely nothing is solved by that. They'll end up committing crime again because it's the next best thing after being a homeless fucking drug addict.

They could get rid of the cause of crime, such as inequality or mental health, they should also stop locking people up for putting chemicals into their own bodies. The reason why they won't do that is because prisons and police departments have a lot of jobs going for them, and politicians rely on the controversy of the drugs war to one up each other. The lack of concern for the people they lock up is seriously concerning. They should help them, not imprison them.
This whole post needs to be gold plated and the thread ended, we have a winner. This sums up so many of my feelings in one post without taking up massive bandwidth.

Brofist man... brofist.
 

Delock

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BreakfastMan said:
So, I am taking an intro to sociology class (because I like that type of stuff, and I need the social science credits), and we recently started talking about crime and deviance. One of the topics mentioned was whether the prison should serve as punishment, or should it be used to rehabilitate the prisoners. So I was curious: what does the Escapist community think? Should prison serve as punishment or rehabilitation?
In my class, we talked about how one of the biggest problems is that after punishment, there is no rehabilitation into a normal life (I'm told the military, another institution that strips away the identity for the sake of conformity, does this).

Why is this a problem? I can sum it up with a quote: "Brooks was here"
 

SliverBlade

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Sep 27, 2009
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Prison life is very hard for some and if used as a punishment, they will never want to return to a life of crime. However, people who don't mind prison should be rehabilitated instead of punished because prison isn't even going to faze them. So it depends upon the case.
 

Jfswift

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Nov 2, 2009
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Punishment is pointless. My argument is that if you punish someone and release them back into society, now with a 'convict' label, not only will it be more difficult to locate work but they'll also be more likely to return to a life of crime. (this is just my opinion, I haven't yet researched this topic).
 

Raistlinhawke

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There will always been those prisoners with an incurable tendency towards criminal activity. But to continue to operate prisons under the mentality of constant, strict punishment without rehabilitation is dangerous from an infrastructure standpoint. Punishment is only effective when the fear of it is a deterrent, and to harass current prisoners to deter possible prisoners seems like a wanton waste of resources. Not to mention maintaining these facilities and their inhabitants is a gross misuse of tax-paying money if there is no larger benefit than perpetual incarceration.

This is a question that must get a definitive answer if the States' prison system is going to make necessary advancements. In its current state, especially with privately-run prisons bringing their own stack of problems to the table with state-run facilities, this is just unmanageable.
 

zehydra

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Oct 25, 2009
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Prison is not to punish the criminals, it's to protect the people from these criminals from further harming society. That being said, week long sentences are completely worthless.
 

Tiscolfo

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Dec 4, 2010
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Id say punishment if every person who went to jail were actually in the wrong, thats why they stopped forced labor in jails such as rail roads.