As far as work goes in prison it is regarded as a privelidge,would you trust a vicious person to work in a kitchen with knives?
Most inmates are quite prepared to work as
long as they can see a positive incentive,
such as wages which,oddly enough,is what motivates non-offenders too.
The current trend now is to allow carefully
assessed inmates to “do their jail” in low
risk prisons in their home locality and have
regular jobs during the day,then as a condition of parole they are later released and must maintain their employment if not it’s back to chokey to finish off.
This looks very nice but truthfully most
prisoners are too risky or in very many cases have nothing that any employer could use,work in prison which is generally of low
skill content,tries to address this.
The test of any society is how it treats
the helpless the undesirable and the unco-operative.
If you feel that revenge and coercion are
the way to deal with the problems that
society has itself creatad then it won’t be long before the guys with dark glasses and
real cool raincoats will be at you door asking why you didn’t vote for the “chosen one” 
Moonshine
“the inmates have already lost many of their rights, it is society’s duty to protect the few that are left”
Doo hoo, I won’t loose sleep over inmates lack of right’s mostly in part beause I will never kill/rape/molest/steal from anyone.
“Secondly, the inmates have already lost their freedom, that is what prison does; enforcing labour would be additional punishment”
I thought punishment was the idea?
" what is to be gained by forcing prisoners into grudging, sullen labour for years or months, making them that much more aggressive and resentful when they get out."
I worked in a foundry for a summer. It was hot as hell and back-breaking work, I’ll never go back there again. Last summer I worked in a nice cushy job, where I got to sit down, relax and read the newspaper…I just signed up for another summer. If your ultimate goal is to rehabilitate people, prision isn’t the answer at all. Otherwise don’t sit on the fence and do a half-ass job of punishing them.
Crystalguy:
My post was meant to specifically address chain gangs, an idea that has recently been brought back into vogue in florida poliitics. They cost more to maintain and do less work than regular work crews.
Originally posted by Moonshine:
Single Dad’s posting merely served to show that he was equating criminal behaviour with religion, race, and ethnicity. Criminal behaviour is something the general public has a right to expect people not to do. Nobody’s denying that the criminals are people; we’re merely discussing a particular aspect of how to deal with people, regardless of their race, religion, or ethnicity, who are committing crimes. (An aside, Single D.: Do you punish your child in addition to “grounding?”)
Not overly familiar with the document which created our government here in the United States; now, are you, Moonshine? Please enlighten us with your definition of the word “servitude.”
But, you might want to note, the Fire Department doesn’t produce a whole lot of income either. But the cities, towns, counties, and states certainly have found them to be worth the expense of operating them.
Nobody’s talking about “sullen labour.” What we seem to be discussing is “honest labour.” You know, the kind that provides one with a skill once released from prison; the kind which makes one proud of one’s self for doing something that does some good for society.
Rights for prisoners? Hmm, let me cogitate on that for a time.
Joe J. raped a 14 year old girl, strangled her and cut up her body.
Sam A shot a 7-11 clerk for no reason at all, after he had the money and was leaving the store. She died.
Ralph K. beat his girlfriend into a coma, while she was pregnant with his child. She lost the baby and is brain damaged today. His reason? She pissed him off.
Daddy D. shot a 15 year old rival gang member because he wore the wrong colors. Shot him 4 times after he had fallen. He also had boosted 4 cars in car jackings, beating a 45 year old man in the head with his gun, fracturing his skull, causing him to have a stroke and leaving him disabled. He sold the cars for $100 each. They were worth $4,000 each resale value.
Big Jake was a chemist and made meth and coke. He made a mistake and the formula turned poison. He sold it anyhow. 25 people across the states died. He didn’t care. It was their problem. He also burgled the houses of the infirm elderly, once breaking the ribs of a 70 year old man who tried to stop him. The man lost a lung and probably 4 years of his remaining life.
Rights? No, I don’t think so. Well, maybe a few, like the right to reasonably palatable food, shelter, clothing, some medical care and to be free from inhumane torture – like random beatings by the guards, being placed in the old style hot box, bamboo slivers under the nails, or conditions like on Devils Island. He has no right to vote, no right to gain parole, no right to education, no right to lodge suite after suite at the tax payers expense, no right to free mail, no right to sit and goof off in his cell all day and no right to throw feces and urine on a guard.
In short – he is a friggin’ criminal, who gave up his rights once he committed the crimes! If he treats the guards like crap, then he has the right to be treated like crap back from them. If he stabs a guard, then he has the right to get the living crap beat out of him and the right to get minimal medical care afterwards and the right to sit in isolation for a few weeks.
Look how quickly the government took away prisoners rights to smoke while in their cells. Yet they have the right to send chunks of feces to their layers, judges and victims familles.
Now, minor crooks are different. The less violent the crime, the better the treatment. (Except for con men.) serial killers should not be allowed to bask in their fame and a dungeon UNDER the prisons should be created for them or they should be sent rather quickly to execution. (In Russia, the condemned only knows about when he is to be killed. He is transferred to a special cell and can remain there for some time before a designated guard quietly pokes a rifle in through a special slot and blows his brains out. The cell floor has a drain in it to sluice away the blood.)
No, I figure they need to loose most of their Civil and Human rights once they get poked in the can, depending upon the severity of their crime.
I’m heartened by the positive reactions to my posts.
To answer some objections and miscellania posted since:
Sake Samurai:
You’re just making a straw man here, an egregious and, on this board, inexcusable fallacy.
I’m not saying these are nice sweet people who need only a hot meal and a soft word to renounce their ways and become honest productive citizens. Violent ‘criminals’ are dangerously insane people for whom we have no good method of treatment.
Have you ever been to a locked ward for violent schitzophrenics? I have, and some of those people scare the s*** out of me. The same goes for violent prisoners. But I like to think that just because someone frightens me, I don’t have the right or inclination to hurt him.
I’m a normal person, living and working and raising my children in the real world. I grew up in New York and San Francisco, and I think I have an idea about what goes on in this world. You may disagree, but I don’t see how you might prove that point.
I understand the point you made in the Pit the other day: Based on this post, you sound like a real sadistic bastard.
Sentinel:
Of course not. In fact, after the first demonstration of his insanity, he should have been incarcerated until we could prove he no longer posed a danger to other people.
[quote]
Monty:
Do you have dislexia? I specifically denied comparing criminality to race. I explicitly compared criminality to mental illness.
All:
To those of you engaging in elaborate violent fantasies of retribution… You guys really scare me.
‘Criminals’ are dangerously insane people, hmmm? I see criminals as falling into at least four categories:
-
Some people turn to crime because they believe, incorrectly, it’s their only way to survive. Learning a trade in prison would help some of them.
-
Some turn to crime because it seems like an easier way to survive than working 9 to 5 five days a week. They actually see jail time as the price one must be willing to pay in order to pursue this chosen life-style, just as the rest of us see taxes as a price to pay in order to keep society going:* “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. I CAN do the time, therefore, I WILL do the crime. And maybe I’ll get away with it.” It’s actually logical (though it proceeds from a false assumption). The insane don’t think logically. Working in prison might not actually do them any good, but at least they’ll help pay for their stay there.
-
Some turn to crime in the heat of the moment, responding to a perceived threat with sudden violence over a football game or that night’s bad dinner or the boss was on their backs. These folks were borderline psychotic, but circumstances caused them to cross that line. They lost control. Many of them regret what they did. Work, therapy and perhaps medication are what they need.
And then there are those who can really only be described as predators. They see other people as less human than they, though it’s really the other way around. They see them only as an obstacle to eliminate or a source of pleasure (rapist, child molester) or money. And they never show remorse. I honestly don’t think work would help them, but, again, it would mitigate the expense of keeping them in prison.
I think 3) and 4) could be considered insane, but not 1) and 2) and only 4) could be considered presently incurable.
*Whether or not the tax burden is presently too high is another topic.
When all else fails, ask Cecil.
SingleDad, you’re intelligent and I respect almost all of your posts so far, so I’m not going to escalate the acrimony here with more personal attacks and innuendo.
I was not erecting a straw man - I was honestly pointing out the reality of a world where your pacifistic, love-thy-neighbor, liberal attitude toward mass murderers, hardcore rapists, and child molesters is about as out of place as tits on a centipede.
It is all too easy to categorize violent men as insane. If the law dictates sanity I’d agree with you, but it most certainly does not. Acting outside the boundary of acceptable human behavior is not insane: it is beastial. You do not treat a killer beast the same as a human.
Yet to be reconciled with the reality of the dark for a moment, I go on wandering from dream to dream.
Lets face it,a very large percentage of you fools have never and will never work in a jail.
Seems to me that you are very big posturing behind the safety of a monitor without any conception or concern about the reality of prison life,you have the idea in your heads that you can mouth off about penal servitude safe in the knowledge that you do not have any responsability or any accountability for the sanctions that you propose.
Fact governments and religions have murdered
and abused stolen and enslaved far more than psychotic individuals ever have-unless you
naively believe that only psychotics tend toward positions of power.Wise up human right abuses often take place when people genuinely think what they are doing is right.
Yes there are terrible deeds carried out I
don’t seek to defend them at all but I wish to point out that if you allow society to seek revenge then you give power to those who would crush any person or group whom that society has decided is unacceptable.
Lets see how you feel when that group includes you.For further reading I suggest you look up -3rd Reich,USSR 1918-1989,Turkey1904,Brits in Australia ref the Abo shoots,how about E Timor?,the Spanish inquisition which existed until surprisingly recently(what crime can possibly be worse than worshipping false gods)
Sake: I retract my comment. I appreciate your unwillingness to escalate. However, you do seem to take pleasure in at least the fantasy of inflicting pain.
Why do you assume I’m a pacificist? I absolute condone the use of force to protect oneself. That is not a pacificistic attitude.
No, it is all too easy to give in to our anger and hatred and seek vengance. But such an attitude adds nothing to our society and in the end takes away much.
This fool has been working in prisons since 1982.
This fool has family members in law enforcement.
So, what do we do with mad dogs? Incarcerate them in state of the art prisons that are climate controlled? Feed them 3 nourishing and tasty meals a day plus allow them to work small jobs to earn money to buy snacks with? provide them with television, radio, magazines, libraries, school and college courses, group therapy, medical care, clothing, dental care, medication and hobbies? Plus, for some, allow them to earn money by being on television, writing books about their bloody murders, become famous being interviewed, giving them clean quarters to live in, release them of all responsibilities of trying to earn a living, paying bills and taxes, and all at the cost of our taxes?
Are you aware that there are prisoners in criminal psychiatric institutions, who will probably never be released, who get 20 hours of therapy a week, plus all of the latest medications? (That’s something like $8100 a month in ‘normal’ costs.)
I know scores of regular people who cannot afford more than 1 hour of therapy a month and have to struggle to get their pills at $100 a prescription. Plus I know even more who have to struggle daily just to pay bills, find food of dubious quality to eat and live in shacks.
And they have not mauled, maimed, murdered, raped or abused anyone!
I know people who have been forever crippled by criminal attacks and are still undergoing medical treatments and their attacker is already out of jail, having served his ‘5’ years – actually 2 due to good behavior, walking around and getting into more trouble.
I know people with violent criminal records out on the street today who still feel that they can do as they please and screw anyone who gets in their way. To them, jail was an annoyance not a deterrent. I know people who have extensive criminal records who are walking around among us who are absolutely crazy in their beliefs and it is only a matter of time before they kill or injure someone.
Such people we should coddle and soothe and give expensive treatments to?
F**k them! Those who insist on committing serious and violent crimes upon the general population should be worked until they can’t do anything else but exist. Gang members have warped concepts concerning loyalty and revenge and walk into prison where they reinforce those concepts and emerge later to spread their poison even further.
Fine. Break up the gangs and put them on chain gangs and make them work. I’ve met people who have absolutely no loyalty to anyone but themselves and who have no problem with shafting anyone nice to them if they can make a buck out of it.
There are people out there who LIKE killing and I don’t particularly care about how they were abused or beaten as a kid.
Drugs used to come in on the beaches near my town and a couple of teens making out on the beach accidentally strolled up on a shipment one night and the people killed them. Thugs hold up convenience stores and randomly shoot the counter people for no apparent reason or just shoot a customer for the fun of it. Little thugs in some gangs accept the challenge of randomly shooting someone on the street to gain entry to the gang. Other gangs kill those they even suspect of being in a rival gang.
So, we’re supposed to coddle these animals in state of the art cells, where they get better treatment than about 40 million poor Americans?
I don’t think so.
Sage wrote (among other things):
Convicted criminals “should be charged for their accommodations, their meals, their laundry, their medical and anything else they receive.”
That’s fine if the criminal happens to have a lot of cash already on hand, but as most criminals do not, and many are in fact indigent, what do we do with them if they don’t pay their bill for their prison accomodations, prison meals, prison laundry, prison medical and prison everything else they receive, put them back in jail and keeping putting it on their tab until they fork over the money that they don’t have?
Of course it is obsence for a serial killer to make millions from the movie rights to his life while his victims and their families suffer, but that is not a particularly common occurrence. Criminals that don’t have the cash have to pay with their time, and we, in the form of the state and its taxpayers, have no choice but to foot the bill. We, the taxpayers and the state can force the criminals to work, be it on chain gangs or on “community service”, but to expect each criminal through such work to earn enough to pay for the the cost is a pipedream.
One problem that many of you do not take into account is that you produce what may
well seem to be logical cause and effect
solutions to the problems of crime.
This is becuase for the most part you think
in a rational way but in my experience
repeat offenders think they will never be
caught despite the fact that they have,time
after time.
Prison is not a deterrant for those who are
sure they will not be found out many inmates are like this.
I’ve been told by most of them that they would not be prepared to work for less than say $500per week in truth you wouldn’t employ them to wash pots .
These individuals think completely differantly to the rest of us they are
often hopelessly out of touch with reality
but rarely are they insane.
Education is provided with specialist courses to try and improve their processes
of reasoning.
I personally have found that when prisoners
hit 30 to 35 and have little but prison to
show for their lives they decide enough is enough,by this time they will have lost most
everything,family,material,spiritual.
These inmates tend to be the most stable and compliant in jail they have more or less
become institutionalised but at last they are
ready to toe the line.
One thing that changes many of them for the
better is having their own children the idea of their kids growing up without them or seeing big changes every time they get a family visit seems to bring home to many inmates the true personal cost of their crimes.
I only comment on what I have seen that actually does change inmates attitude for the better what I do note is that they seem
to become worse the more pressure is forced
upon them.
I suppose the old adage holds good that you
can’t put a wise head on young shoulders.
[A word of advice, casdave: a post is easier to read if the lines tend to all be the same length. Don’t hit the ENTER key unless you want to make a paragraph break.
Proper spelling and punctuation are appreciated as well.
When all else fails, ask Cecil.
No, I do not have dyslexia but I do know how to spell the word. The rest of your posting proved that your denial is a lie. BTW, I bet some of your best friends are X, aren’t they?
Aha,thats why I can’t get things to look right.
Your advice is duly noted-thank you
Sentinel
Yes. This costs us little, we are safe from them. What benefit do we derive from not doing so other than the slaking of our vengance-inspired bloodlust?
I don’t support them the right to earn money. As I recall many, if not all states have passed laws saying that any money a prisoner earns must go to restitution of his victims.
As to making them famous, we as a people are interested in them. That’s what makes them famous.
As I said before, when you incarcerate someone, you take away their ability to make free choices to support themselves. Thus you take on the responsibility to provide for that which they are entitled (food, shelter, medical care, etc.) and can no longer freely provide by reason of their incarceration.
To inflict coercion on someone for reasons other than self protection is oppression.
To inflict pain on someone without their consent is sadism.
Violent criminals are such because they coerce and inflict pain on other people. To do the same to them (in excess of that required to protect ourselves from them) merely brings us down to their level.
If you want to assert that we should not have to pay for prisoners’ or mental patients’ treatment, that we should provide only basic food and shelter until they die, well, that’s a topic for another thread. The point of this thread is that we should inflict no additional coercion upon them.
Monty
When I slam someone, I should most definitely double-check my spelling. Most humble apologies. Next time I slam you, I assure you I will do so with impeccable spelling, grammer and punctuation.
SingleDad, thanks for the retraction. I do take pleasure from inflicting pain - but only on those who deserve the pain (well usually - I’m getting better.)
You stated that you:
I would say that capital punishment IS the use of force to protect ourselves. Killers will KILL again. Molesters will MOLEST again. Rapists will RAPE again.
Sure, there is no such thing as civilized homicide. The taking of life is brutal. I can accept a little brutality to prevent even greater brutality.
Answer that age old question:
You’re sitting at the computer reading this when all of a sudden, a haze descends and you are mysteriously transported and find yourself in Berlin, 1939, hidden behind the drapes in a posh vestibule where Hitler, Goering, Goebbles, and other top Nazi officials are relaxing after a meeting where they went over some administrative points of Anschluss and the Final Solution. None of them are armed, the door is closed and there are no guards in sight. You look down and you have a M-16 and 50 pounds of plastic explosives strapped to your torso. What do you do?
If you you kill any of these men, you are a believer in capital punishment. If you do not kill them you are a monster. (HERE’S your straw man arguement!)
Yet to be reconciled with the reality of the dark for a moment, I go on wandering from dream to dream.