Should prisons have weight lifting facilities?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was gonna start this thread in GD but it might not be a GD in the end. If it does, mods feel free to move it.

I vote for no. There should not be any weight lifting facilities in prison. My main reasons for this are as follows:

  1. Violent offenders who are in prison for 6 years will come out bigger and stronger than when they went in. Why would we subject ourselves to this? If someone gets locked up for beating a man to within an inch of his life, why should he be able to pump iron all day for 6 years and make himself more dangerous?

  2. Big guys will get pumped up huge and be able to pump the small guys asses. There already seems to be a “bigger is better” mentality in prisons. If the big guys are able to get bigger what chance do the little guys have to fight off sexual assaults?

  3. These guys are paying for crimes towards society, not being put up in a health club. I work a 40 hours work week and go to school at night. I pay $40 a month for my gym membership. I have a tough time finding the time to go pump iron. Inmates get to work out all the time, its free, and they don’t work. So they focus on pumping asses and pumping iron.

Of course, this is all IMHO. What do you think?

2

I agree with you, Stinkpalm. It just seems like a bad idea to me, for the reasons you mentioned.

3

Should they have NOTHING to do all day? That way, when they’re let out, they will have been driven certifiably insane from boredom. I’m sure they won’t do anything, er, crazy.

4

Who cares? As long as they cant bench 400lbs when they get out. Let them turn to flab. Not our problem. Let them read books on how to not be criminals. Isn’t that the point of prison?

If a guy beat the shit out of someone with his bare hands, arent we taking a risk by letting him make his bare hands more powerful?

5

This probably has a lot to do with the way the prison gets managed, or maybe I should say, the ease with which it is managed.
I would guess that if an inmate misbehaved, they would lose this privilege. Loss of privilege can be a pretty effective way of influencing behavior.
The working out allows them to “be happier”. I am not exactly in favor of keeping inmates happy, but I would imagine it curtails at least some of the violence on the inside.
I am not familiar with the way they manage the day, but I don’t think they get unlimited time to work out.

6

I think it is important to have exercise facilities in prison, because lack of exercise makes people listless, cranky, and unwell, and so more likely to take their frustrations out on others.

If you want to substitute regular Jazzercise sessions for the weight training, I don’t have a problem with that.

7

Did you have a “Dummies” book in mind, perhaps?

**

What does it matter? The kind of person who likes to beat the shit out of people isn’t going to be stopped simply because he didn’t have the chance to work out. He will acquire a knife. Or a baseball bat. Or a gun.

8

But why hand him the gun so to speak? Let’s do what we can to keep them from getting more powerful. If he gets huge he can also stab and crush harder with the bat or knife.

Letting them get ripped makes no sense. If they need excercise let them do cardio. That should be good enough to keep them “healthy”, as if I really care.

9

That small bit of extra stabbing and/or crushing capacity scarcely seems worth bothering over.

The more time they have to devote to pumping iron, the less time they’ll have to devote to ass-raping. That’s what I figure.

10

I think all prisonsers should be forced to smoke cigarettes and eat bon-bons. That way, they will be too fat and asthmatic to chase me when they get out.

11

That’s a coincidence, I was thinking about this very topic the other day. I agree, it doesn’t seem to make sense to build up these violent offenders - although not everyone in prisoner is a violent offender. However, if the prisoners didn’t get the exercise, they would go stir-crazy, and find other ways to get exercise - pounding on the other guys’ heads, for example (both heads). And that would also worsen the situation for those who do have a chance of rehabilitation. Plus, without regular exercise, the prisoners (esp those serving long sentences) would be more prone to illness, which would have to be treated at the taxpayers’ expense. Gym equipment is a space-saving way of providing exercise for large prison populations. However, like someone else said, exercise classes would have similar positive effects, so I don’t know why they don’t do those. Must be some reason.

12

I think the reason for weight lifting facilities are similar to the reason for TVs, etc. Namely, prisoner control. There are not that many guards at prisons, and they need to do what they can, within reason to keep the inmates happy (as much as one can be in prison). If the inmates have nothing else to do, they will get rowdy.

It would be great if you could get people to spend more time in the prison library, but for an uneducated mope who may not want to read, it’s just not gonna happen. Besides how intimidating would prison library gang be.
[big nasty con]
“Hey, boy, you’re in the non-fiction section. That’s ourt turf. Us guys in the Devil’s Historian gang don’t like people in our turf. Here’s a message to take back to your science fiction/fantasy buddies”

13

Prisoners can make booze out of Tang, knives out of toothbrushes, and shovels out of hardback books. You think taking away the weights will make them stop working out?

Those who have commented on the “prisoner control” aspect of it are also right. The few guards I’ve known and asked about this have said that the inmates who work out are almost always better behaved.

14

I have a problem with my tax $'s going to keep prisoners happy with cable tv and weights. There have been times in my life where I could not afford these things for myself.

I would love it if the inmates had to work for their room and board. Give them tough manual labor jobs so that they are to tired to fight. Of course we’d have to find a way to do that where jobs were not being taken from the general free population, but there has to be some way they can pay for themselves. let them break rocks all day, or better yet farm for their own food.

15

Tabeitha - I believe most prisoners are required to work within the prison. In some prisons there are prison farms. There are also laundries and kitchens and other shops that are run with prison labour to keep the prisons functioning.

Personally, I believe that the prisoners should have mandatory schooling, particularly those without at least a HS diploma. It could be the job of those prisoners with college degrees to teach. They would be hopefully more employable when the are released and would then be less likely to commit crimes. I don’t mind them having some free time, whe they could exercise, watch TV, etc., but that should be between their work and school.

StG

16

StGermain - in the UK, prisoners often do take courses with the Open University, who do a few late-High School level courses as well as excellent university courses. It’s not mandatory, though.

17

Look at the age range of cons, then you’ll see why gym facilities are not a luxury in jail, they are a necessity.

Cons are usually between ages 16 through to around 35, the main recreational physical activity age group.

Many cons come to jail heroin thin, fact is that were it not for jail, then a large number of them would be dead - just a question of how many others they take out with them.
Many cons overcompensate for their dangerously unhealthy lifestyles, and make the gym the centre of their world.

Active recreation is an outlet for stress and agression, if you work in a large enough company then you may have stress management counsellers, who will inform you that active recreation is one of the best therapies for controlling stress.

Jail is an extremely stressful environment, and remember that the more stressed out the cons are, the more duress the staff will undergo, it is their working environment and prisons management have a duty of care for their employees just as much as to the cons.

I cannot think of a prison in the UK that does not have organised work, it is seen as essential to the security of the establishment.

Mandatory training sounds all great and wonderful, but you are thinking in a non-con mode.
Cons usually will not do anything unless they can see a direct personal benefit, such as parole, movement to easier jails etc, and the result is that they may volunteer themselves for education and training, but they are only going through the motions.

Rare is the con that actually does want to learn, this would be seen as compromising himself to the prison authority by other inmates, not a very safe option.

You cannot force any person to learn using legal methods.

As for tough manual labour, its been tried for centuries, hasn’t worked in terms of rehabilitation although society itself might benefit from the work performed, however why should the prison system use cheap labour to unfairly compete with workers who have committed no crime and need a job ?

One thing that folk must remember, that the overwhelming majority of offenders will be relaeased into society, locking them up in isolation, or brutalising them is not a terribly good idea, you’d just get more psychopaths on the loose.

The fitness gained from using the gym is lost very quickly, any athlete can tell you that, not many cons on release have the abiltiy to structure their lives to maintain their physical fitness, given a few months they are pretty much like everyone else, maybe worse if they’re back on the drugs again.

Inmates do not get to work out all the time, they have to work, they have to complete courses ranging from anger management, to psychiatric evaluation, education, drug counselling, courses to improve reasoning etc.

Ture they do not pay for recreational facilities, if you want to take part just commit a crime, trust me, it’s price you would not want to pay, just for a few hours a week free gym time.

18

My cousin is a guard and hates it when state legislators try to take away privileges from the inmates; he wants to be the one who decides who gets what, not take it away from everyone. The more levers he has, the better.

Weight lifting in particular help the inmates to blow off steam, which is a very good thing for those who work in the prisons.

So, from the point of view of those who work in prisons, weight lifting is a great privilege to be able to take away when necessary.

19

Come on. Not all violent offenders start out being dead set on committing violence. Not all of the “like to beat the shit out of people” under normal circumstances.

20

Hmm… come to think of it, we’d better close down the prison librarie. too. If convicts start reading books, they’ll get SMARTER! And who wants smarter criminals out on the streets?