No, I’m not talking about hot babes in prison – though that could make for an interesting topic elsewhere. I’m looking for thoughts on what you all think is the best philosophy for running a penal system.
The way I see it, there are these basic models:
Rehabilitation: We show offenders that what they did was wrong, and teach them how to cope with life in such a way that they won’t have to (or want to) resort to crime.
Punishment: We lock up criminals as sort of a grownup “time-out” and/or make them suffer in some way to make up for the misery they’ve inflicted on others.
Warehousing: We take these anti-social offenders off the streets to keep them away from law-abiding citizens.
Restitution: We use convicts as a labor force to benefit the society they’ve harmed.
As it stands, the prison systems of most nations use a little of all of the above, with emphasis on one factor or another. What I’m wondering is, what do we semi-enlightened Dopers think is the best way to deal with the human criminal impulse?
Feel free to expand on anything I’ve already listed. If, for example, you feel that we should institute indentured servitude, forcing criminals to work on their victims’ behalf, go ahead and argue for it. If you want to see all violent criminals executed and all non-violent criminals sent to the spice mines, tell us how you see it working.
I might not contribute anything after this, but I intend to look in on the thread as long as it’s active. If I feel the need to give more input, I’ll be around.
–Da Cap’n
“Playin’ solitaire 'til dawn
With a deck of fifty-one.”
In the “bad old days”, guilty persons were strictly punished. If you committed a murder, the punishment was death. The jail cell was not considered a punishment. It was a holding place for the accused awaiting trial, to protect him from victims seeking retribution. Only after a trial where they were found guilty were they punished, usual by death. Governments didn’t have the resources to try to rehabilitate them or direct them in restitution.
Putting someone to death was not considered “cruel & unusual”. What would have been cruel was to house them in a prison, where conditions were dismal to say the least. But in the last 200 years or so, prisons improved, and just being locked away for years was considered a punishment. So criminals started filling prisons for lesser offenses.
They also had a chance to fulfill a sentence, then be returned to society. This brought about the worry of repeat offenders. So then we began trying to teach criminals a better way to live. Part of this was job training. This training had product output, which could be sold. That’s when using prisoners as a labor force for menial jobs came about. (This last one is frowned upon by workers who want those jobs, low-paying as they may be.)
Now for my opinion:
The punishment should of course remain paramount. Being locked away for years seems to fit this bill for the most part. Next, a thourough psychiatric evaluation should be done to find the prisoners who are likely to be repeat offenders, no matter how much training and counseling they get. Likely repeaters of violent crime should be sent to a institute for the mentally unbalanced/insane. There might truly be something chemically wrong with them that medicine might control. The non-violent repeaters should have normal sentences, but when they get out, they should have an infinite parole. They should always be accountable for their actions.
What would Brian Boitano do / If he was here right now /
He’d make a plan and he’d follow through / That’s what Brian Boitano would do.
deterrence: Some people believe that punishing criminals influences other potential criminals to choose not to commit crimes. In this particular case, a fear of being imprisoned will discourage the commission of crimes.
As for the reasons given, #1 and #5 are problematical. Nobody has conclusively show that rehabilitation or detterence actually works as a general practice.
#4 is also difficult; how to you determine the “cost” of many crimes? How much must a criminal earn to repay the cost of a murder or rape? And should a wealthy person be allowed to pay the sum upon conviction rather than earn it during imprisonment?
#2 is mostly a moral judgement. If one person harms another person, does this give society the right to harm that person? If it’s wrong for an individual to intentionally cause harm, why is it right for society to do so?
#3 is in my opinion and based on my experience the only workable rationale for prisons. Removing criminals from society will make society a better place. Granted, efforts should be made for rehabilitation, restitution, and detterence, but it needs to be realized that much of these efforts will have little effect.
And Freedom, with the exception of drug law violaters (admittedly a major exception) almost all convicts are in prison for one of the crimes you listed.
one of my pet peeves is the the possibility of a jail term for small offenses. I know that jail terms seldom get imposed for small things (like littering), but I wonder how many people plea out their cases because of the threat of incarceration.
Sorry if this seems extreme to anyone… its my only extreme view, most of the time I’m fairly left wing, I just feel strongly about this one.
Paedophiles.
Let them rot. Lets cut off their thumbs and brand them with a giant “P” on their foreheads. Castrate them, lock them away for 20 years, and if their still alive, send them onto the streets to face a community of people who know what they have done.
sorry, I just feel extremely strongly about this.
Getting 8 years for ruining a childs life is not justice.
::end hijack::
back to your normal programming…
J
“We should have as high a regard for the church so as to keep it out of as many things as possible”
Fluther Good -the Shadow of a Gunman.
Sean O’Casey
My thanks to all 5 of you who’ve responded to this important and compelling Great Debates topic. :rolleyes: I’ll have to try again later, this times with more of a “Babes Behind Bars” approach.
Re: Deterrence – I think this only works on those of us who are more or less law-abiding citizens anyway. If I feel the temptation to do something criminal, my little voice says “dude, do you really want to go to jail over this?” By and large, the people who are in jail seem to be there because they are not deterred by the thought of imprisonment.
Re: Pedophiles (US spelling) – a very touchy subject, pun intended . Pedophiles definitely need to be kept out of circulation, because of the danger they pose to our children. However, we need to remember that, for the most part, they really can’t stop themselves. While I’m all for torture in the right circumstances, your recommended (and clearly exaggerated for entertainment purposes) treatment of thumb-lopping and branding would not change their behavior.
Re: decriminalizing drugs – I agree somewhat. Weed should just be legal. As to the harder and nastier, life-destroying stuff, well … while we should have the right to do to ourselves whatever we like, I don’t know if I’d be willing to sanction legal crack or heroin. Decriminalize possession for personal use, but make sure that dealers keep getting torpedoed. Also, additional penalties for crimes committed while chemically altered (including drunk) makes good sense to me.
We need to have parole, because some people who commit crimes realize the extent of the mistake they’ve made. Put 'em in jail for a long time, but first offenders should have a shot at getting out if they demonstrate their desire to walk the straight and narrow once released. Release shouldn’t be guaranteed for them since some will just repeat their offenses, but there should be some hope.
I need to go do some work now, it’s my job after all.
–Da Cap’n
“Playin’ solitaire 'til dawn
With a deck of fifty-one.”
Actually, punishment doesn’t work! (It may make you, Joe Citizen, feel better, but that isn’t what I mean).
“Aha, the reason you commit these crimes is that you have much too good a sense of yourself. We’ll just hurt and humiliate you and drag your self-esteem down into the shitslime and make you feel really bad, then we’ll release you and you’ll do good from then on”…???
I say we put serious effort and money into rehabilitation and, included within it, the opportunity for the individual to express dissatisfaction with the social status quo, i.e., to provide reason why people other than him/herself oughta be the ones in whom change should be located. Give them opportunity to change, with fewer “strikes” before “striking out” for seriously socially disruptive behavior (violent, coercive behavior).
Then, if it doesn’t work, kill them nicely, painlessly and quickly.
Prisons don’t work and they cost way too much. That money should go to rehab.
emmm Captn’, I dont know how to put it, but I wasnt exaggerating. Well, maybe a little, but I dont believe that they dont know what they’re doing. Prolonged abuse of children, and threatening them into keeping quiet shows that they have calculated their crime. they know the repercussions.
OK, the methods are extreme. But Rehabilitation does not work for them. there has to be a way for them to be kept permanently out of the loop.
J
“Attemptedmurder? pah, you dont get the Nobel Prize for Attempted Chemisty”
Sideshow Bob
JohnLarrigan, I never said they (pedophiles) don’t know what they’re doing – I said they can’t stop themselves. At least, that’s what the commonly held belief is among people who have to deal with child-molesters. While extensive therapy may help some of 'em get over it, it seems more common that the behavior can’t be erased.
Another problem, both with pedos and criminals in general, is that they are never allowed to stop paying for their crimes. Imagine you are convicted of burglary or some such crime. You go to jail, you see the error of your ways, you buy into the whole rehab thing. Once you’re released, you’re branded as an “ex-con” and can’t get a decent job, and nobody who finds out about your past will rent you an apartment. It’s even worse with the molesters – even the few who can turn themselves into decent people MUST let the community know that they were convicted of fondling minors. No town in the world will let them stay; no company is willing to accept the liability of hiring them.
And rightly so. Can you imagine what a child has to go through, everyday, everytime they close their eyes, until they can (if they ever) get over it? Think of that, and is the paedophiles punishment enough?
JL, how far are you willing to take it? I’m not trying to argue in favor of early release programs for pedophiles, but your argument is putting me in Devil’s Advocate mode. By the example of your last post, any action that has a long-lasting negative impact on another human being should be dealt with via life in prison. We need to come up with something better than this; otherwise, our criminal justice system could be abbreviated to read: “Don’t screw up or we’ll put you away forever.”
Of course, in many situations there are people who need to be put away forever. Most pedophiles, rapists, murderers and the like don’t reform. What about the ones (rare though they are) who manage to turn themselves around for their own good and the good of the rest of the world? “Sorry, you’ll just have to rot here” isn’t a satisfactory answer.
I can imagine it, and I’m also fairly certain that the offenders also suffer inside for what they’ve done. You don’t see them walking down the street smiling after they rape a 7-yr-old. Many are consumed with guilt for what they do, and those feelings of guilt only drive them to seek refuge in the only thing that gives them momentary comfort – more pedophilic acts.
I’ve known a few grown-up victims of child molestation, and they’ve managed to grow up pretty normal. I’ve also known a man whose life was destroyed when he was falsely accused of molestation. Cut-and-dried, simple answers to the question of what do we do with the various types of human predators don’t fit well. We need a more reasoned approach, sez me.
–Da Cap’n
“Playin’ solitaire 'til dawn
With a deck of fifty-one.”
Most pedophiles can imagine it. The majority of adults who molest children were themselves molested as children. This certainly does not excuse their actions, but it does help explain the psychological pressures that were placed on them that causes them to act so reprehensively.
As Cap’n Crude said it’s virtually impossible to rehabilitate a sex criminal. If they are capable of surrendering to their impulses once, they generally will continue to do so whenever they are able. This leads back to my previous post where I said the most important function of a prison is to seperate criminals from their potential victims. I believe anyone convicted of a sex crime should be incarcerated for the rest of their life.
My problem with attitudes as reactionary as John’s, even towards something that is evil is that it precludes the possiblity of rational thought. There are people who think that everyone accused of being a molester is one, that anyone who defends an accused molester is evil etc. Now, few of them will come out and say so - but everytime they read about someone arrested for such a crime they immediately assume they are guilty and should be tortured to death or whatever.
This is further complicated by those psychologists that make their money by inducing false abuse memories in their patience. This kind of crap to me is as intolerable as the sexual abuse itself.
As far as what to do with convicted violent offenders? I agree most can’t be rehabilitated. I favor keeping them in a controlled environment that is not unpleasant, where they can work and earn their own keep without ever posing a danger to people on the outside. Forever. Cost is not an issue - they can still be productive. Those few that can be rehabilitated…well tough luck. No matter what we do it will not be perfect, and I think the system should favor the needs of the innocent over the needs of the guilty.
. Pedophiles definitely need to be kept out of circulation, because of the danger they pose to our children. However, we need to remember that, for the most part, they really can’t stop themselves. While I’m all for torture in the right circumstances, your recommended (and clearly exaggerated for entertainment purposes) treatment of thumb-lopping and branding would not change their behavior.