The Stanford Experiment proves nothing except that people can always find evidence to support their pre-conceived beliefs. Did you notice for example that all of their information on actual prisons was obtained through the single source of one ex-inmate? Or that in order to properly “simulate” the prison experience within the constraints of their experiment, they invented procedures which they admitted didn’t exist in actual prisons? Or that grabbing twenty four random people and arbitrarily making half of them “convicts” and half of them “guards” doesn’t really say anything about their real world equivalents?
As for the Prison Rape site, this has been discussed in several past threads. Rather than reopen that debate, you can look up what’s already been said.
I also realize I’ve wandered off from the specific topic of the OP. In my opinion, the Arizona jail system needs a new sheriff. The current one seems more concerned about playing to the electorate than about his actual job of running a jail. As for inmate restitution, it’s an interesting idea in theory but basically a moot point. The facts are that most inmates don’t have any assets to seize and aren’t likely to ever get any.
I’m not against criminals paying their way (indirectly) but it should occur in court during sentencing.
I’m also a proponent of sparse living conditions. That doesn’t mean a prisoner can’t have salt, they just need to earn money to buy it. The efficient housing of prisoners is something that should be a top priority because in the long run it serves prisoner’s needs. Money spent on luxury items could be used to build more facilities (reduce crowding) and provide vocational needs.
In some respects, things like this already exist. In the prison in which my husband works, the inmates are given the necessities of life (i.e., food, shelter weather-appropriate clothing, toothpaste, and toliet paper) but must buy any luxury items, like snacks from the comissary, cigarettes, soda, etc. (Inmates who cannot work are given a small stipend.) In order to be able to buy these things, they either have to have outside funds sent in by family members, or have to work in one of the prison’s job programs. (The items in the comissary are porportionately priced to the low wages they earn.)
Entertainment and recreational items are purchased out of the proceeds from the commisary. Taxpayers don’t pay for things like gym equipment or games. The fund grows until enough money is therein to afford to buy the items. The inmates make suggestions, but the staff makes the ultimate decision on what to purchase.
New dorm facilities are often impossible in these times of budget cuts. Prisons are closing in my state-- some prisons are at 250% capacity, and there’s talk of closing more of them. In most states, there are many rules and regulations as to what kinds of structures inmates live in, so just slapping up a pole barn, or other cheap structure may be out of the question. Approved structures may cost millions of dollars.
So, in my state, cutting back on the “luxuries” inmates can have wouldn’t change the overcrowding situation. They’re two entirely seperate funds.
I agree. If the sentence is a $5,000 fine and a few years in prison, it seems cruel and dishonest to impose an additional fine of several thousand dollars to pay for the imprisonment. Reminds me of the movie Brazil, where the government tortures suspected terrorists, then bills them for “information retrieval”.
Prisons are there to serve the public interest, and the public should pay for them. If the public is upset at prison costs, they ought to think about whether all of those non-violent drug offenders really need to be locked up.
In Family Court (yeah, I know – we’re not talking prison time here, just jail for civil offenses), we have a judge who was charging people he sentenced for child support violations something like $140 per day for their incarceration (he has since been ordered to stop). Given the fact that they were in for not paying child support, and the fact that a fairly high percentage of their children were already on welfare for their parent’s failure to support, it was kind of a pointless exercise.