We sort of do that one now, actually. Certain types of probation get a monitoring ankle bracelet that lets police keep track of them. If you try to take it off, into the pokey you go.
Er, this is going to sound kind of odd. I don’t personally think its a very reasonable idea, but its an idea none the less. What about death sentences for serious crimes? Rape, murder etc etc. Not only would that get rid of the problem of tax money being spent of prisons it also get rid of any chance of convicts repeating their crimes. Plus rates of crime may go down if the consequence of commiting a serious offence is death.
There are of course many problems. Some innocent people would be killed while the real criminals go free. Moral outrage would be a big one of course. Also you get rid of any chance of rehabilitation.
I don’t personally support this idea but I suppose it could work. Thoughts?
Because boredom makes prisoners more violent! There’s nothing more dangerous than giving a guy 24 hours a day to think up ways to escape or to harm others. Keeping them distracted is safer.
Have you ever seen a TRUE super maximum security prison? The inmates stay in their cells 23 hours a day, in complete isolation, with very little to occupy their minds. The inmates in these types of prisons are the worst of the worst. Boredom and frustration sometimes literally drives these people insane.
You’ve got to realise that the majority of people in prison are not “lifers.” Putting them in harsh, isoltaed conditions that damage their mental health and then releasing into the general population is a tradgedy waiting to happen.
Prison is hell, pure and simple. Some folks adjust to it better than others, but no inmate is truly happy on the inside. As I said before, it’s a dangerous, uncomfortable, and degrading place. Why else do you think people flee from cops, kill witnesses and generally do anything to avoid going there?
Yes, some inmates do want to go back due to the difficulty they have returning to society. There are several reasons for this. First, the difficulty in finding a decent job. Who wants to employ a rapist or an armed robber? However, these people have to eat, and often return to crime as the only way they have of supporting themselves.
Secondly, inmates generally have poor education and or job skills. Recently, I read an article on this very subject. Some people genuinely do not know how to express themselves politely. When a cutomer enters the store, they might say “What do you want?” which, of course, is a perfectly valid question, but is more politley expressed as “May I help you?” Polite communication is not innate-- it must be taught. Some inmates have little social skills, and on top of having a record, leaves very little in career opprotunites.
Third, inmates often have poor impulse control, and in some cases genuinely do not know right from wrong. An inmate mind might see stealing as wrong only because they might have to go to prison for it. Some of them have utter lack of empathy. Can these types of people be rehabilitated? Possibly-- with inntensive therapy work and training, which our current system doesn’t offer. There are simply too many inmates to give each one the attention he needs. The goal of our system is not to rehabilitate, but to punish. Efforts at rehabilitation are weak at best.
Fourth, lack of community support. Often an inmate is released with only a few bucks in his pocket, and a bus ticket. His family may have disowned him. Halfway houses have long waiting lists, and generally only parollees are sent there. Guys who serve out their sentance are simply pushed out of the gate, often with no where to go, or no idea of what they’ll do once they get there. Hardly anyone wants to live next to, employ or befriend an ex-con. Often, their only friends are those within the criminal element. Even with the best intentions, often an inmate is led back into crime because he has little other choice.
I honestly can’t see where harsher treatment would help matters, other than satisfying our natural desire for revenge as victims of crime. What little training and educational programs that they are may be expensive, butare important.
It’s the tough-on-crime politicians who will gladly fund more cops, but hate to spend a dime on incarceration that are the problem. Criminals don’t simply drop off the edge of the earth once they’re “off the streets.” Cutting funding from prisons only make them more violent and dangerous places for the staff to work.
In my states, prisons have been closed, and rumors are flying that more are due to be shut down next year. The inmates are stuffed into already-crowded prisons, and staff is cut. Tensions rise from overcrowding, and with less staff to plice them, it’s a recipe for disaster. Cutting recreational, educational and training programs only make the inmates more bitter and angry with the system. They’re bound to re-offend. Perhaps the programs only offer a slim chance of rehabilitation and a normal, productive life on the outside, but even a slim chance is better than none.
I certainly don’t want to defend the American prison system, especially as it relates to the “war on drugs”, but this is simply untrue. According to the World Almanac there are 1.4 million people in federal and state prison (and you give a higher number of 2 million people locked up). But according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Soviet gulags had 5 million people in them by 1936 (and the Soviet Union in the 1930’s had a lower population than the United States does now). Five million may be a conservative estimate; other sources talk of the total population of the Soviet labor camp system reaching 10 or even 15 million during the worst periods of repression. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn estimated that in all, 40 to 50 million people were in the gulags at one time or another.
Generally speaking, the UK did this. Unfortunately (from the UK standpoint) they lost a war with them and the place eventually became known as the USA.
The UK tried again, but failed at it there. Ever hear of Australia?
Ok then, my last suggestion would be to equate the crime with an amount of torture. I am pretty certain that if the public heard felons (of violent crimes or child molestation and the likes…not fraud or something non-violent) were being tortured as punishment for their crimes, then not only would the criminals not want to go back and be tortured again, but the non-criminals wouldn’t want to be tortured for a crime either, and would be more reluctant to commit it than with the current system. I understand that problem is with that little “cruel and unusual punishment” clause…
But most criminals bank on not being caught, or being found not guilty at trial.
The problem with this would be our jury system. It’s hard to get a death penalty conviction partly because juries are a bit squeamish about killing a man if there’s even an iota of doubt. This is why a great deal of criminals who would technically be eligible for the death penalty get life in prison instead. The DAs sometimes decide it would be too difficult to get the ultimate punishment.
Juries might be even less inclined to sentance a person to something as extreme as torture.
Then there’s the problem of how much torture for each particular crime. Such as child rape. The child will be emotionally scarred for life. Would five hours of torture, or some other arbritrary number, be enough to make up for that? The next 70 years of the child’s life equals ten hours of torture? The rapist will presumably recover from torture more quickly than the victim.
OP: I wish they drop Soup Nazi off in that thing he imagined “…with one set of clothes …” and never look back–let him taste something called ‘a$$ power ball’.
Well, ABC News, quoting the Bureau of Justice, said 2 million:
U.S. Prison Population Rising: Incarceration Rate May Top Russia as Highest in World
As far as rape, and child molestation is concerned, castration, or preferably cutting the enitire thing off completely, will definitely help matters. There would be no repeat offenses at all.
we have the technology to cut it off, it is not a hard nor an expensive operation, and certainly much cheaper($1000 - $2000) than keeping him in prison for $20,000 a year.
This is not about revenge, rather it is making certain that any rapist or any child molestor will never ever be able to do what he did, ever again - by making it totally physically impossible for the criminal to do it if he doesnt have his thing anymore.
For those who might be squemish, or be afraid that a jury of all men might not want to convict a child molestor or rapist, then make it voluntary, give the child molestor a choice of his punishment:
- death,
- 50 “actual” years behind bars, or
- cutting it off.
Moderator’s Note: Susanann, please don’t copy and paste the entire article; a link is sufficient.
Sorry. Ok.
At any rate, the U.S. rate of incarceration may now have exceeded that of the current rate of incarceration in Russia, and the U.S. may therefore have the highest rate of incarceration right now–which is certainly nothing to take pride in–but our rate of incarceration has not exceeded or even equalled that of Stalinist Russia, and ours is therefore not the highest rate of incarceration “in the history of the world”. (Stalinist Russia is only one example; there may have been others among the other Communist or totalitarian societies of the 20th Century; for that matter, ABC News notwithstanding, I doubt if anyone has any very good statistics on what the current rate of incarceration is in North Korea, but I bet it’s pretty high.)
Even if you are right, and you probably are right about Stalin, if you include labor camps, than we are only second in the history of the world behind that infamous man named Stalin!!
I for one would not be quick to defend my self by saying that : “Hey, we are ‘quite’ not as bad as Salin was”
If you want to open up this topic, and now to include “labor” camps or “concentration camps” of a countries own people, instead of just “prisons”, which is what the topic is supposed to be(“prisons”), then dont forget about the first “concentration camps”, i.e., the INDIAN RESERVATIONS!
Just how many indians were disarmed, starved, and put into reservations(concentration camps)?
How many millions? back when the total population of America was much less than today. I think it would be a pretty high percentage of Americans that were forced into camps.
Well…I don’t want to defend what happened to the Native Americans…but…
They were not “Americans” in the sense that they were citizens. They were their own nation, seperate from America.
That doesn’t make it any less wrong, but as far as prisons go, we are talking about a government incarcerating it’s own people. If you are going to count the Native Americans, then you would need to figure out how many people England, France, Spain, Rome etc…etc…etc…repressed while they were off conquering the world in order to have a valid comparison.
However…you could probably count the Japanese-Americans that were interned during WWII.
Of course…It sure looks like you are pushing an agenda and trying to find facts in order to supprt a position you have already decided on instead of letting the facts pick your position.
Not at all, I am entirely open minded.
I really want to see the information and sources which are contrary to what I have posted.
Please tell us now of anything that is contrary to what we have presented.
I gave the FACT that the incarceration rate in America today was "one of every 147 residents was an inmate in an adult jail or prison " a couple of years ago, and which is still increasing.
The link was: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/prisons000420.html
" Viewing the latest figures in light of the current U.S. population, one of every 147 residents was an inmate in an adult jail or prison at the middle of last year.
In Russia, one of every 146 people was behind bars in 1998, the last year for which figures were available, according to The Sentencing Project, a private group that advocates alternatives to prison."
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/prisons000420.html
Can you give us YOUR facts and figures with sources which support YOUR position?
Do you have ANYTHING which disputes what I quoted?
…if so, say it, list it, and give the source.
This is off topic.
I was not the one that brought up concentration camps, etc., it was the moderator who expanded the topic to include those by talking about Stalin.
If you want to continue to talk about and compare labor camps, concentration camps, indian reservations, and so on, then you point is false.
First of all, you may be right about indians not being citizens, but they WERE americans.
Secondly, the american indians were no less “conquered”, no less considered in america as being americans, than the “conquered” Armenians, Ukranians, Latvians, Estonians, Hungarians, Polish, Checzklovakians, Germans, Jews, etc who were killed or put in Soviet Russian labor camps by Stalin. For the most part, the people in in the labor camps in the Soviet Union were, in fact, “conquered peoples”.
Using your “logic”, about whether “citizens” vs. non-citizens are the ones put into labor/concentration camps, was Hitler a pretty good guy? since he put so few actual German “citizens” of the Arian race in jail?
This was also done in the movie No Escape, with Ray Liotta, although that was only an island, used for the highest security prisoners. Survival of the fittest and such.
What is my position?
I’m not sure that I even have one, but I am sure I haven’t staked out any position in this thread. So far I was just participating in a conversation.
Somehow I doubt in the history of all mankind, the native americans were the first people put into “concentration camps.”
Without even thinking too hard, I think the Jews qualified as being put into “reservations” by the Egyptians a little bit before the native americans.
Are you trying to make me laugh? The topic was about emptying our current prisons and putting everyone into one free-for all area where they couldn’t interact with the law-abiding citizens. It had absolutely nothing to do with incarcertation rates. You were the one who brought up incarceration rates.
Then you made the assertion that :
Somebody showed you where you were wrong and then you brought up the reservations and Hitler. The gulag was the official penal system for the USSR. Comparing them to the US penal system is legitimate. They were not a system of concentration camps in the same sense as the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.
Plus…how long have you been around? Haven’t you figured out yet that moderators are not really “moderators” when they are participating in a discussion? They make it crystal clear when they are operating with their “moderating hat on.” So, the moderator didn’t expand this topic, rather, another poster corrected something that you had said.
Look, I don’t disagree that we have too many people in jail. I’m all for ending the war on (some)drugs. I’m of the opinion that prisons have become an industry and too many people have it in their best interests to raise the number of people entangled in the legal system.
However, you would never know because you fill your posts with hyperbole and are on a defensive hair trigger anytime anyone dares disagrees with the extremities of your arguement.
Chill out.
Rape is not about sex. It’s about power. A great many rapes involve no penile penetration. The rapist may use a foreign object, his finger, etc. The object of a rape is to be able to fantasise about it later, not instant sexual gratification (though there may be some).
Cutting off the penis would not have any effect on a person whose goal is to terrify and degrade another person in order to feel powerful.
This is utterly impossible. The only way to ensure that a rapist will never rape again is to kill him.
And what victim would not chose the death penalty? A child could not make this kind of choice because of their immaturity. The parents would have to make it for them, and being enraged at what happened to their child, they would chose option one, unless they had a strong anti-death penalty stance.
Option 2 is attractive to me. I have always believed that sentancing for sex crimes should be tougher. With our current system, however, this would lead to horrible overcrowding.
Option three is what most people would grimly enjoy as poetic justice. “If thine right eye offend the, pluck it out.” Unfortunatelly, the urge to rape is not in the penis, but in the mind. It won’t change anything.