I’ll leave the cites to someone else, wouldn’t know where to look, really. But if you, despite all evidence, seriously believe that hard prisons reduce crime, I don’t see why you can’t accept the far more logical notion that several years dedicated to NOTHING is slightly maddening, but even suppose it’s impossible to prove.
Oh really?
‘Scotland has radically reformed the conditions and treatment for remand prisoners.
Victorian conditions for remand prisoners were described by the Prisons Inspectorate as “a national disgrace”.
It is heartening then to report here on recent changes in those conditions. Remand prisoners in Barlinnie are no longer in overcrowded cells, enduring the demeaning and unhygienic practice of slopping out. This is the final step in a remarkable chain of events which was set in train by Alec Spencer, the Governor of HMP Edinburgh, when in December 1998, he made the bold decision to house remand prisoners in a new state of the art building…’
http://www.innocentuntilprovenguilty.com/scottishexample.html
Have a read about how inhuman prison conditions (still much less severe than your suggestions) lead to suicides, and how reforms have saved lives.
'As punishment, Collins, pictured, then 26, was transferred to a segregation unit in Perth Prison known as “the dungeon”, a hole in the ground at the bottom of a long, spiral staircase. With no windows, he did not see daylight for more than a year.
“They put me in a straitjacket and beat me up twice a day for five days,” he said. "The doctor said if I suffered any more injuries, I would die. I was injected with drugs to keep me docile.
“One of the things that sticks in my mind was the cockroaches. Every time they slammed the cell door, the plaster came off the walls and I would wake up to find them crawling all over me.”
Collins said the psychological aspect of his punishment was the worst. Losing all sense of time, he had no idea how long he would remain in solitary confinement.
Today, he owes his life to a prison officer who displayed a kindness and warmth he had never experienced.
“Most of the screws didn’t give a damn, but one of them did care and I came to respect him. You can’t lock people up and treat them like animals. If that’s all you do, when they do get out, they’ll kill again. You’ve got to give them an opportunity to change.”
Prison officers began to negotiate with Collins and he was moved to the progressive Barlinnie Special Unit. Now closed, inmates enjoyed privileges and were encouraged to expand their minds with group therapy, reading and painting. Collins, now 54, discovered a talent for sculpture; released in 1993, he is now a writer and sculptor. ’
Oh look. One of the most dangerous murderers in the country is now leading a productive life.
Your statements imply that inmates have it too easy in prison. I voiced my opinion somewhat to the contrary. I do feel like our correctional institutions are not dealing with the potential for rehabilitation as well as it could.
Before you blast me for being weak on crime, take notice that I live in TEXAS.
I don’t know what you know about my state, but weakness in not part of our character. “Don’t mess with Texas” is our motto. We execute more prisoners than most of the country combined. There are no luxuries in the prisons. When I say it’s hot in prison I don’t bullshit. It was well over a 100 degrees F outside today. There is mo A/C or even fans in prisoners cells or the rest of the unit for that matter. My brother works at a unit. He says it gets over 120F inside the prison.
Weak on crime! How about having to serve time in jail for being drunk in a bar?
How about a life sentence for DWI? You best rethink this OP. A friend of mine was killed in prison by a rapist. He got arrested for marijuana (a joint) wound up getting a year and was killed a few months later.
If you can’t take the heat, huh!
I read your posting. Did you? You made a positive statement; that of, “should deter.” You are asserting that your plan has a larger likelihood of working than it does of not working.
So, for the THIRD time, I am asking you: what is your evidence?
Because I wanted to make it clear that my post was intended to apply to those who commit serious crimes, rape, murder, child abuse etc. and not to those found guilty of minor crimes such as motoring offences.
Really it was more than obvious that this was what I referring to and no explanation should have been necessary.
SHOULD as opposed to would, see it now? it aint hard.
First, there are civil rights that apply across the board, to any human being in the jurisdiction of the country, simply because common humanity calls for it. For example, no torture. “Cruel and unusual punishment” is a civil right that obviously applies only to convicted persons. Other rights: “free exercise” of religion (including the right to no religious beliefs) is something a prisoner cannot be deprived of. Freedom of speech, right to appeal, right to challenge conditions of imprisonment… there are a number of issues where specific rights apply to prisoners.
As to why: even as punishment, much less correctional/rehab., imprisonment should be finite and (barring life sentences without parole) with the end in mind of restoring a convict to society. DWI, Burglary, Narcotics Dealing – they are crimes which deserve imprisonment. But they are not things which deprive their perpetrators of their basic humanity. There’s a balance that needs to be maintained there.
So now I have to dig out a dictionary because you are refusing to back up your own words? Oh, well, here goes. All definitions below are taken from dictionary.com.
I notice that I mentioned in my last posting that you have an expectation of your plan working. The use of the expression should deter indicates such an expectation.
So, here’s what we have. You used an expression indicating that you not only consider your plan to be workable but that you expect it to have a greater likelihood of working than of not working (Does “should deter” come to mind?) and I have politely asked you thrice what evidence you have for that.
Come on, now. It ain’t that hard. Or maybe it is for you.
Come on, chowder, your reasoning for this is weak. Either you explain in more detail how your hard system scares criminals away, or you provide some examples.
What you’re arguing is basically that criminals deserve this treatment, you’re merely mentioning that you also think it would be effective. However, most of us seem to disagree that criminals getting what they deserve is an adequate excuse for jail, we also want them to reduce criminality. For us to accept your method, we would need either evidence or arguments for effectivity, “just” punishment is really beside the point. (I hope I’m not misinterpreting anyone here, I trust you will call me on it if I do)
I’m not sure why you put my name here, because you didn’t really address my post.
I’m eagerly awaiting your response on the issue of religious discrimination: it seems like a (further) violation of human rights to grant visitors to some but not others based on their religious beliefs. Your statement “everyone is entitled to their beliefs” is a non sequitur, because beliefs are something you have in your own head; you don’t need a visitor’s help to believe in something.
No, but race does have an effect on sentencing. The causes are debatable, but the statistics are there.
One might say the same about being able to see that subjecting people to this kind of treatment would mess them up.
Uh huh. Sounds like an abusive husband telling his wife “If you’d just stop talking back, I wouldn’t have to hit you.” You can’t excuse such horrible treatment just by giving an advance warning.
Now you’re repeating yourself, and I should point out that fourth comes before fifth, not after. (Although one wonders whether this entire thread came after a fifth…)
Maybe he means “should” as in “you should be nicer to your brother” - an expression of desire, rather than likelihood. “It’d be nice if this worked as a deterrent [but it doesn’t].”
I trust you’re willing to volunteer to spend six months in a good-sized bathroom to demonstrate how mad you wouldn’t get.
That’s noble of you, but it seems evident he used it as an argument as to why his method works. Using should as an expression of desire, his argument becomes something to the effect of “My method works, because it would be nice if it did”
Seems like that’s what it boils down to anyway. 
Well, at least I suppose he’d have Pangloss on his side.
It’s not like civilization has had today’s prisons since time immemorial; draconian conditions have been tried before, as glee’s cites in post 22 demonstrate.
chowder, why do you think prison conditions were changed if those ways worked so well? Why have most societies moved away from those conditions, as opposed to staying with them if they are so effective?
I know that Texans like to play up the tough reputation, but the actual state motto is “Friendship” (sounds almost wimpy, doesn’t it?) and the “Don’t Mess with Texas” slogan was from an anti-littering campaign.
Punishment has historically been shown to have a fairly limited effect, we in the UK had the death penalty for what would be called minor infringements, such as stealing a pie - a 9 year boy was executed for that, transportation for even less serious crimes but such draconian measures did not in themselves reduce crime.
Its also a matter of record that UK prison terms have steadily increased over the last 100 years, but no-one would say that we currently live in a golden age of crime free living.
Crime does have a very strong correlation with poverty, it goes up when we have a recession, and generally decreases in better times, it afflicts those at the lower end of the income scale, hence the disproportionate number of ethnic minorities in prison.
Crime is pretty much a class ridden affair in the UK, especially violent crime.
These are mostly associations rather than proof, crime itself can be a cause of poverty for example.
For all that, the idea of deterring crime seems to me to work only in a more limited sense, multiple offenders can and do change their offence of choice when the tariff for their usual crime becomes more than they are prepared to accept, so a burglar might change to car theft, but when the tariff for multiple car crimes goes up, they may change to credit card fraud, or if they carry out street robberies and it looks like the next such crime will net them 8 years or so, they will change to something less costly in terms of jail.
You’ll note though, that these habitual offenders still keep committing crime, and they also accept that at some point they will also be caught, hence the change of crime of choice to minimise the jail term.
The most striking thing about criminals as a whole(which isn’t that good a way to consider them) is that their education levels are appalling, with a typical maths age of around 5 to 7 years old and a reading age of around 9 years old.
It means that they are effectively unemployable, but it also means something else, they actually do not have the intellectual power to understand what they lose when they are given a prison term.
The vast majority of prisoner I deal with struggle to read the newspapers, and by that I mean the lowest rags published, they fail to understand the concept of media bias, they are unable to generate the cynicism that one get from reading such papers because they simply do not have the critical facilities.
Around 70% to 85% return to prison, the figure is higher for younger criminals, those under 21, than for those over 30 which will come as no real surprise.
It shows that rehabilitation does less to prevent crime than does jail time, years and age are what have the most effect.
I do think that beyond a certain age, repeat offenders are most unlikely to ever make a meaningful contribution to society, by the time a repeat offender is around 26, they will have an offending career stretching back 14 years or more, they are unemployable, and the reality is that they would not be capable of holding down work if it came to them easy.
I think there is a case for these repeat offenders being held in prison for extreme terms, without the costly pretence of rehabilitation.
You need to realise that in prison, we have drugs counsellors, careers advisors, psychiatrists, psychologists, teachers, trades skills trainers, along with social workers, those delivering the many life skills courses etc etc etc.
This does not come cheap, and quite honestly, we could save this money by not pretending we have the answers to criminals, and instead simply hold them in an institution for far less money until they are incapable of causing society harm.
I’ll let you do some of the maths here, but,
Lets imagine a drug addict with a fairly mild heroin habit, its costing around £200 per week, or around $300.
I’ve chosen drugs because that lies at the root of around 66% of UK prisoners, and bear in mind that this relates almost completely to hard drugs and not cannabis or ecstasy. You could make some argument about legalising drugs but that would be a hijack.
To obtain that money, our addict has to acquire goods of around 10 times that value, because thats the going rate for stolen stuff, could be mobile phones, GPS units, stolen cars, whatever you want to think of.
This addict has to do this 52 weeks a year, whilst committing this crime, our addict also does not work, and in fact draws state benefits, not a huge amount but you the taxpayer are funding it, and remember that someone will have to provide somewhere for our criminal to live, another cost.
Add in these costs, and multiply by 10 years or more - quite a sum isn’t it ?
It costs around £25k per year to keep our criminal inside a Category C prison per year, but if you took out all pretence at rehabilitation, and just went for containment, this would be significantly less, perhaps one third to one half the cost.
There is one further thing, I was just showing you the financial cost to society, but you can’t put a value on the misery these individuals inflict on us, the individuals that make up society, your stolen car is damn inconvenient, but the increased insurance as a result is also a pain, but this is mild compared to the fear of going outdoors that the victim of a violent robbery may undergo.
I genuinely think there is room in the prison system for contianment, not just of serious criminals such as murderers, but also for repeat offenders, and forget about rehabilitation, forget about deterrance, just keep them isolated from society with no pretences.
A criminal is someone convicted of a crime, and your skin color ( and gender ) affects whether or not and how harshly you are convicted and sentenced. A white woman can do things and get a warning ( or nothing ); a black man can do the same thing and get years in prison.
Because that is what has happened and does happen when you lock someone in isolation for years. < Googles > For example : Link
Of course; since when have we ever cared about the welfare of ex-convicts ? We’ve never tried to help the ones who were released after being proven innocent ( or even apologized to them ), much less the ones who are guilty. We dumped the mentally ill on the streets under the same theory, that help would just materialize; it didn’t.
You didn’t say anything of the sort; you said prisoners with no qualifications.
And of course all laws are fair and no innocent person has ever been convicted of anything.
See my cite above, or just read a little about the subject. Bad treatment produces bad behavior; that’s human nature.
While I agree with you in theory, the problem is innocent/undeserving people will be sent to prison. It’s the nature of an imperfect system run by imperfect humans. You should always design a system on the assumption that failure will occur. You can try to make it less common, but you can’t eliminate it.
Do you know what the endless boredom you describe usually leads to? Riots. Violent felons with far too much time on their hands, going insane with boredom. Think about it. They’ll end up worse than when they came in. A lot of kids end up in trouble because they were BORED and didn’t have anything else to do. Any parent or teacher can tell you that!
Would you REALLY subject the prison employees to have to deal with that?
Plus, for family visits-do you think it’s fair to that person’s family and friends to not see their loved ones? Why do you want to punish them too? They didn’t commit any crime.