Prison: Isolation or Punishment?

[Bachanomon92]

Send them to gitmo while it's still here.

Sry dude, its been closed.

 

[Ancientgamer]

Some prisoners live better than people on the outside. Provided one sides with the right crowd and doesn't drop the soap too often, I don't know how it's either. They have social time, cable TV, weight rooms, guaranteed three meals a day ... There are pictures out there of some prisons that look nicer than my apartment.

I say hook them all up to shock collars (give the remote to any living victims) and make them live in the worst of poverty for the duration of their sentence. And then put it on TV.

Interesting that you bring that up, in my city every year, there's a big rash of petty crime, turns out it's just bums trying to get free acomendations for 3 or so months. (over the winter) It costs our city a massive amount of money.

 

[RebelRising]

Is rehabilitation a valid factor in punishments?

I'd like to think that, with the more serious criminals, like serial killers and rapists, imprisonment is punishing them because they can't be rehabilitated.

I don't think so. You can't easily rehabilitate and punish at the same time. A two teir system would be better in my opinion, identify those people in there due to making a bad mistake but are never-the-less not criminally inclined, and seperate them from the true hard core. Try to help them get their lives back on track as quickly as possible. Education, training, and identifying and mental health or drug issues the offender has. The sooner the are back out and earning their own way the sooner nobody else is paying for them.

For that hard core element have a seperate system that does punish, particularly for dangerous offenders. Violent thugs and the like. I am completely unsure what form this punishment should take. Work is a very big no-no, as you take jobs off people who ordinary people who haven't committed crime.

Unless the person is serving life you are going to have to let them out at some stage though, so it pays not to brutalize them. Doing that will only make them even more dangerous upon release.

That's what I was trying to say. It comes down to individual cases; it's not fair to hand out the same punishment of a serial murderer to a down-on-his-luck burglar, but I really don't think the severe offenders are redeemable. Even if they don't do it again, you can't completely get rid of the urges and mental tendencies.

 

[Bachanomon92]

So from what I can see the point of all prisons is to try and fail at whatever it's actually supposed to do. Interesting.....

 

[Jinx_Dragon]

Interesting that you bring that up, in my city every year, there's a big rash of petty crime, turns out it's just bums trying to get free acomendations for 3 or so months. (over the winter) It costs our city a massive amount of money.

I've come across people working with the poor who have encouraged them to go out, do something petty and get put in jail cause it will at least be a bed, food and warmth for the winter. They didn't feel comfortable doing it, but they where looking out the best interests of the people who are less fortunate. This speaks to me about the carelessness of society.

It would probably be easier, and cheaper as there wouldn't be a justice system to pay for as well, if these cities just invested in some decent programs for the homeless. I don't mean some run down building which leaves them feeling less safe then on the streets, but a real program to get them off the street, cleaned up, fed and maybe put them to work. Paid work, which is what they need to break the cycle that leaves them homeless.

 

[GreenDevilJF]

I would say isolation since people ***** about actually punishing people who did crimes nowadays. Prison just seems like a minor inconvienence, one that is payed for by the people who did nothing wrong.

 

[DrunkenKitty]

Prison as punishment and rehabilitation is a ridiculous idea. The idea that a criminal is going to go into an unnatural, controlled environment, surrounded by no one but other criminals and come out the other end an honest citizen is just ludicrous.