Lobotomyboy, you make some good suggestions. I think this is a really important discussion and I’m glad to see it taking place on the Dope. I wish more media would get people thinking about how to improve our justice and prison systems. I’d like to see as many people interested in this as in welfare or immigration issues.
It probably helps if you clarify that you are a prison guard and not(as far as we are aware) a hardened criminal. Not everyone here knows that. 
I think incarceration is a multiple whammy.
First, the convict is a burden on the taxpayer.
Second, if the person were on the outside he could be a taxpayer.
Third, it will make criminals of those who weren’t and harden those who already were.
Fourth, I think we’re throwing away human beings. Rather than deciding that the best thing for society is to get them on the right track and give them another chance, many want to drop them in a hole and forget them…it’s the pound of flesh approach.
[tangent]
I followed the recent “To Catch a Predator” thread and I think that’s a good example of how logic v. emotion makes consensus nigh impossible. Some people responded very viscerally to the show, which I understand, but I very highly suspect that some of the men were abused themselves as children. I’ll defer to a qualified person who comes in and says otherwise, but I’ve often heard that abused children grow up and later re-enact the drama as the adult perpetrator in many many cases. Shorthand: the child is powerless to stop the abuse, so he grows up carrying the rage and when he gets a chance, tries to “reclaim” power by becoming an abuser. Saying he shouldn’t is like saying an alcoholic shouldn’t take a drink because he’s in the grips of a force than he can’t handle.
Still, rather than get the men psychological help, many think it’s better to label them evil, lock them away, and punish them ad infinitum…even after they’ve served their time.
God, I wasn’t comfortable at all with that being shown on TV, yet it was like a car wreck I couldn’t help staring at. I kept thinking, ‘This must be a bad dream I’m having.’
For one thing, they didn’t blur their faces or otherwise conceal identities, and in fact they told where they worked, their ages, etc.—yet they had NOT been convicted when the episodes were released. For another, I really don’t like the idea of non-law enforcement setting up the stings and the media interviewing them when they hadn’t even been told their rights. What about their families, who did nothing wrong, possibly being ostracized or ridiculed or threatened in their communities as a result? Was the network performing a public service or just cashing in?
It majorly skeeved me. I think if you’re going to try to catch the bad guys, you ought to be on the high road yourself at least. Sure I want to protect minors from predation as well but that wasn’t the way to do it. Whether those men go to jail or not, the stigma is never going to go away, even if they get help and work through their problems. The media glare was cruel and unusual punishment, IMO.
[/tangent]
Bottom line, you don’t beat a man so far down that he can’t get back up. No, my heart doesn’t bleed as easily as it may seem and I’m sure there are bad asses whom no amount of intervention would rescue. Still, from a humane point of view I think we have to salvage those we can…but also, it’s preferable to building more and more prisons or releasing the truly incorrigibles early because our facilities are overcrowded.
I killed a man for asking me personal questions.
Okay, seriously, what I did to go to prison was take a civil service test. As Throatwarbler wrote, I work in a prison (and have since 1982).
It’s a myth that innocent people just end up in prison by accident. It’s actually quite difficult to get incarcerated. You either have to commit a lot of crimes or commit a really bad crime. People who get convicted of minor crimes like DWI or smoking a joint usually spend a few days or maybe weeks in county jail - it’s not fun but it’s also not “long-term incarceration” which is what we’re theoretically discussing here.
Well, yeah, but I think it’s the wrong approach to use things as a deterrent that we really are not happy with being carried out. It teaches people to accept prison rape as just “what happens” (and they do, too; you wouldn’t believe how many people talk completely seriously about “pound-me-in-the-ass prison”).
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris