When I say soft on crime, I mean soft on punishment.

The inarticulate debate is when the U.S. is compared to other western nations; we have a much higher population.....Try breaking it down, I've already done this on another thread using Great Britain as an example.

But thanks for whining in on my thoughts.

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Anyone who thinks freedom comes cheap, please put the blindfold on and stand against the wall.

IT IS TIME for Americans to take back the country and start a new government.

It's not a brush-off at all.

If all we were concerned with was rehabilitation, we could get rid of prisons and build a shitload of monitored halfway houses...

"Punishment" is good enough for me...

Oh, Hell no.

I don't think prisoners should have access to televisions, game rooms, weight rooms, or telephones. Their visitation should be restricted to immediate family, once a month. They should get mail once a month. There should be no concept of "trustees".

They should be given access to religious activities twice a month.

For those who will be released within ten years, give them access to educational opportunities.

They should be given no more than 15 minutes to eat a meal. Their movements should be in the form of military marching formation. They should be permitted no radios, I-Pods, computers, televisions, or magazines. No inmate should be permitted more than three photographs.

Anyone found guilty of commiting a crime while in prison should be sentenced to a minimum of an additional 25 years in prison, and lose any possibility he had of parole, regardless of the severity of the offense. Anyone who attempts to escape, or aids in escape gets an additional 15 years, also with no possibility of parole.

My scumbag step-brother has been in and out of prison for most of his adult life. When I ask him why he just doesn't get his shit together and stay out of prison, his response is "Prison ain't so bad".

Well, it really, really needs to be...

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For those who have fought to defend it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know...



If it wasn't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all...

Actually, I don't have any issue with any of those. Go figure.

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Whan they come, Ah sall staun mah grun
Staun mah grun, an be na afraid.
Thochts ae hame tak awa mah fear
Sweat an bluid hide mah veil o tears.

Thus the rehab vs punish issue, which will come up under Any approach.

Which is a good arguement for both some flexibility in the 3-strikes approach and for the death penalty.



On a theoretical, macro-economic level, anyone working is better better than anyone left unproductive, but there must be some consideration to individual and/or local impacts like the printing example given earlier. I won't claim to have a specific or even general solution, but it is not in the societal best interest to ignore such impacts entirely.

There could be many interested parties besides the 'warden of a profitable prison.' A lawn service that can replace it's Mexicans. A printing shop a hundred miles away who would like to see the locals run out of business so they can get more market share. A warden (or other labor-arranger) taking kickbacks on when/if his slave labor is available to various competitors. A cookie conglomerate who enjoys cheaper nuts harvested by prison slave labor. I'm sure there are other examples.

Again, too narrow of a view. Rather than blatently enslave one person for 10 years, a more incremental approach is more subtle and probably easier to implement - Increased rates of prosecution, more stringent plea agreements (or none), longer sentences, more denials of parole, more delays before parole hearings acually occur, or other approaches could all net you that 10 man years of labor.

Don't get me wrong - I favor the idea of prisoners earning their keep and/or learning a skill, but the devil's in the details. My first thought on a general approach is to limit their output to products and services that are then marketed back to government entities, thus minimizing impact upon the general economy.

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Today's forecast: Government corruption.

Tomorrow's forecast: 100% chance of more 'politics as usual'

Maybe it's finally time to vote Libertarian

Wow, there are some great ideas floating around this thread!

I agree that prisoners should be doing more work to help generate revenue for the government. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if their work ends up competing with private industry. If it ends up putting private companies out of business, people have decided that the goods and services provided by prisoners are somehow superior. The bottom line in my mind is prisoners should be doing something productive and contributing to society rather than simply living out their days in prison cells.

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Which part of "per capita" did you choose to ignore?

Which part of "crime rate" did you misunderstand?

Both of these terms take into account the difference in size between countries being compared.

Indeed, this inarticulate debate is rather more inarticulate than I thought.

Given the responses I've gotten from just trying to interject some facts into this discussion, I should think any actual or serious policy proscription I might offer is well beyond the scope of this discussion. Offering a serious analysis of US corrections policy is quite unlikely to be welcome to this crowd.

One cannot solve a problem until one understands the nature of the problem, what is happening and why. I've seen little or no evidence in this thread that anyone takes the issue seriously.

I'd imagine that before any serious discussion could take place about improving the US corrections system, a consensus would need to be reached on the primary purpose and goal of the corrections system. There seem to be three rather general goals: punishment, removal from society and rehabilitation/prevention.

While there is no reason for these three to be completely mutually exclusive, policies designed to further one may detract from the other.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Good point. Except the 'removal from society' sounds like a re-phrasing of 'punishment'. I should think 'public safety' is a better term.

Punishment, public safety and rehabilitation/prevention are the three principal goals.

And that suggests that there is no single answer to the question, given that there is no single type of offender. Offenders come in a variety of shapes and colors, therefore the policy ought to be similarly diverse.

And as I alluded to above, complex answers are very unsatisfying for many people. Most just want blood.

Draconian conditions and dehumanising de-stimulation is only going to turn prison into a breeding ground for the honest to god criminally insane. Steve, can you see anyone emerging from a prison system such as yours after ten years without being either a gibbering lunatic or a catatonic vegtable?

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THE GOVERNMENT HAS SENT ME

prisons creating criminals.. or criminals creating prisons... *cue twilight zone theme.

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"To those who say what must be said; They lead the way for those who will do what must be done."

Capitalism is Democracy, vote with your dollar.

The audience is asked to remain seated until the end of the recession.

This isn't a chicken or egg arguement, smartypants.

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THE GOVERNMENT HAS SENT ME

I wish I had the time to respond to much of this as I think I am about the only person in this thread that actually has any Law-Enforcement experience or has even set foot in a prison. They are segregated to different facilities according to their diagnostics. Rehabilitation is out because most of them were never habilitated in the first place. Solitary is just a way to create psychosis. Most of these guys have a mandatory release date regardless of their performance.

Warehousing? Of course. That's what the voters want and their elected reps have done. Nobody wants to spend any money on convicted felons. Society says "Fuck Em" and then wonders why they re-offend. Lawyers have given them rights you and I as normal citizens would never have.

We provide community-standard health care for free, meds for free, regardless of the disease, legal assistance, education and vocational training.

Some people just need the structure that prison provides.

I could go on and on and on and on...

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Prisoners > Per capita:

#1 United States: 715 per 100,000 people
#2 Russia: 584 per 100,000 people
#3 Belarus: 554 per 100,000 people
...
#73 Canada: 116 per 100,000 people
#74 Australia: 116 per 100,000 people
...
#93 Germany: 96 per 100,000 people
...
#126 Japan: 54 per 100,000 people

NationMaster - Statistics > Prisoners > Per capita (Latest available) by country


The number of prisoners in the US is just incredibly high. And it doesn't really seem to prevent crime any better than in other countries.

Absolutely.

What would be wrong with separating inmates based on the amount of time they're serving?

Do you take issue with my witholding of priviledges and visitation? Hey, too bad for them; they're in fucking prison. It's not supposed to be "happy fun time", it's prison...

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For those who have fought to defend it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know...



If it wasn't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all...