Prisons in America and elsewhere.

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That's right kids, fully half of the folks getting raped are nonviolent offenders. But I'm sure they deserve it.

Or, wait, I know what this thread needs:



Hyperbole? What is this 'hyperbole' of which you speak?

 

I really don't understand why allot more prisons don't have a work policy ,like if you work you get better food ,privileges and a wage you get when you come out of jail ,you also learn a job get some discipline and kill time .

 

Wow, The Running Man movie didn't age very well at all.

Prison is clearly a place where the strong prey on the weak. It is also full of people who clearly have some issues with following the rules of society. You also have to remember that there are plenty of people who never get out of prison, so their incentive to behave is even less.

 

Which is an excellent point. What use is sentencing someone to 397 years three months and half a day in jail, when he will only survive 35 of them? Or put differently, what use is it to, say, sentence a 19 year old pot dealer to 26 years for dealing a few ounces of marijuana when a rapist may get probation and time served, or some 8 years or even 25 years? The 'war on drugs' is largely responsible for distorting punishment for some crimes out of proportion. The discrepancies suggest an incapability to distinguish the important from the unimportant, to allocate resources sensibly and set sensible priorities.

In the most simple way, instead of chasing after our pot dealer, the cops could have chased burglars or muggers. Police is a limited resource. If the the small fish like our pot dealer got a sentence that actually reflected the severity of his crime (or nothing at all, if you legalise marijuana), there would be more time to focus and keep an eye on the really bad guys. It is thus a small miracle that the prison industry is booming even in time of economic crisis. The question is whether long terms are good for anything but soothing public fears, and preventing politicians from appearing 'weak on crime'. Spirited pledge:

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The high prison population in America speaks a clear language. It is exacerbated by states and the federal levels trying to 'out-punish' each other because being 'tough on crime' pays politically. Think of people like Sherrif Arpaio.

Besides, a report on prison rape: No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons (link to PDF). Decidedly unfunny stuff.

 

One of the major justifications of the war on drugs was that drugs were a source crime, meaning that drug use and addiction often drove people to commit other crimes, like theft, muggings, rape, and murder. I don't know how much modern statistics justify that argument in retrospect, though.

 

Forget 'modern statistics', we have a modern case study: Portugal.

Short version: decriminalization am good, it am.

 

Just to even things up a bit for the prison population. One whacko tries to attack a guard and gets mobbed by the other inmates. The first punch is .

 

That was awesome! It's like WWE - the first inmate to arrive gives the attack a flying clothesline!

 

You should reads the article about the "heroes"...

Inmates Save Deputy's Life

 

Do you think that will give them some leniency when up for parole? I do.

 

It should give them some leniency -- evil acts should be punished, but good acts should also be rewarded.

 

Likely special priveledges as well, if they don't already have them.

It's kind of sad how single-tierred our corrections system is, though. It's prison or basically nothing, and once in prison there isn't much worse that can be done, except more prison.

 

Yeah, I knew what they did but I think it shows that prisoners aren't no hopers. Once people have served their time they should be given the chance to turn their life around.

In the article I read (can't remember where) a lot was made of the fact that the warden was a good guy and popular with the prisoners (maybe not the assailant). I don't think prisoners should be treated too nicely but I wouldn't make their regime overly harsh either as standard. They need an expectation from society that they'll be treated decently.

 

prison

I dont believe prison helps either society or the prisoners themselves. For society, it is costing the public probably a lot more in taxes than is stolen by the few drug addicts or whatnot.
My solution is simple, though probably not very politically correct - give all prisoners a job to do....put them into the military and send them to someplace else. If they desert then they wont be our problem anymore. If they dont then they will be providing a valuable service in defending our country. Of course there is the possibility that they go berserk and kill their fellow soldiers, but if theyre all prisoners as well then i doubt too many people will cry over it.

 

That does generally lead to the problem of a piss-poor army, though. I mean, not only are they not well motivated, but they're also likely to be terribly undisciplined. Imagine if the army we sent into Iraq had been mainly populated by rapists, drug addicts, and murderers! It was bad enough as it was.

 

Well, Muffildy, I can tell you know very little about what it takes to be in the military or about the humanitarian services they do throughout the world.

 

Muffildy
I guess you can use criminals in an army, but the discipline needs to be draconian, considering that it starts with coercion to begin with. That would be against the American tradition, and probably require disciplinary procedures and techniques that would violate human rights. Oh yes, and then you'd need to find officers tough enough to lead such scum bags and who dare face them when armed (soldiers get arms, you know) and dare turn their back on them, unafraid to get 'fragged'.

T2 is right that you apparently have an uninformed view on the matter.

On the other hands, I read that it isn't that unusual in the US for young troubled persons to be given a choice between joining the army and going to jail, provided their offences aren't of a serious enough nature to mandate punishment. I agree that serving in the military can be an empowering thing. Then, there is a problem of gangs sending people to the military to 'learn skills' or others who sign up to hide from prosecution (as an alternative to hide in jail for a lesser offence to ride out the search for the culprit for a greater offence). There is gang activity. That is seen as a problem by the army.

 

You know, I have a simple solution for people who don't like the conditions in prisons. Here it is -- it's mind boggling -- brace yourself for a really novel concept here:

don't commit crimes.

Wow! I mean, what a frigging concept! And all the horse puckey about "oh, the poor are forced into it" is just so much enabling garbage. I know plenty of poor people who don't commit crimes. I've had really, truly rotten days, and I didn't commit any crimes. There is no excuse for committing crimes -- end of story. If there are extenuating circumstances, then there are plenty of bleeding hearts who will champion your cause and get you off the hook. But I find that most "extenuating circumstances" tend to be "I was in the middle of committing a minor felony and was 'forced to' commit a major one." No sympathy from me on that one.

The same thing goes for the wrongful conviction argument. Most of the people whose stories I've heard were admitted criminals who ended up getting convicted for something they didn't do, yet they freely admit to drug dealing, assault, and other crimes. My answer is if the bastard had been living a decent, law-abiding life in the first place, he's never have gotten such a crap reputation in the first place and it wouldn't have happened to him*.

Bottom line, if prisoners put half as much energy into acting like decent human beings and following basic rules of civil conduct as they did about whining about how the government isn't treating them fairly, they wouldn't have to worry about getting raped in the showers, because they wouldn't be in jail.

*hostility aside, once they are there, I want to re-iterate my point that the government should keep them locked away in an 8 x 8 cell so they can neither hurt others nor be hurt by them.

 

I have to vehemently disagree, LKD.

I find that the recommendation 'don't commit crimes' in particular in a context of prison rape is not exactly ... helpful. It is eventually tantamount to suggesting to a female rape victim that being raped is her own damn fault, after all she foolishly exposed herself to a rapist - which then manifested itself in the rape. Everybody hates rapists. As long as they rape woman and children. But as soon as it's about a male victim, and in jail, it's a good joke? Not!

For that matter, it is utterly irrelevant whether said male victim then is a criminal or not. As I said earlier, prisons are not places where the law doesn't apply, and interaction between criminals and prison inmates are not relations in which the law doesn't apply - if that was so mobsters murdering mobsters would not commit crimes because, after all, it's criminals interacting with criminals. And prisons are also not places where the state merely locks away 'bad guys' and 'throws away the key'. They're places where bad guys live under the rule of law that after all put them there, and that includes them not committing crimes against each other.

 

the military

The point of putting them into the military is that i dont believe they have 'what it takes' and so when they get sent into action they can be the guys who do the stupid things and so are killed thereby saving tax payers the cost of prisons as well as allowing the good soldiers who are disciplined to then atleast know where the enemy is since they just shot the decoys.
Barring that, and they do actually survive, then one would hope that the process of going through the training and the field action would make them better people.
That all being said, there are some people i dont believe are suitable candidates for a tour of duty - ie any criminals who are insane or really really sick. But your run of the mill convenience store robber turned murderer might make a good soldier...or decoy.