# What should prisons do? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 6, 2010, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743 "2010-11-06T23:55:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743/21 "2010-11-07T15:59:24Z")
> [@ramel](#): > > If there’s a solution to crime, I doubt it will have much to do with prisons. I agree. My personal opinion is that prisons are the worst place to try to solve the general problem of crime in society. It’s the place where the failures of the crime-solving problem end up. Rather than trying to rehabilitate 25 year olds, we’d get a lot more effect if we spent the same resources trying to prevent five year olds from growing up to be 25 year old criminals. Do that and we’ll start having empty cells in twenty years. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743/22 "2010-11-07T16:03:43Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > I remember reading about that. They were doing it to avoid boredom. That folds in with what **Little Nemo** was saying about mental health. As for the humiliation aspect, if they’re wearing the stocks (or whatever) as a badge of pride, then it’s obviously not humiliating them, so you switch to something that does. Humiliation really doesn’t work for most criminals. For humiliation to work, you’ve got to care what society thinks about you and most criminals don’t. Criminals tend to be very narcisstic - they’re always thinking about what people did to them, not what they did to other people. A day in the stocks would just make them resentful about how unfairly they were treated. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743/23 "2010-11-07T16:05:23Z")
Almost all the prisoners will get out of jail . Warehousing them, getting them educated by other prisoners and getting them in good physical condition is counter productive. We have to rehab them . They have to come out with more opportunities that they went in with. They need skills and an education to achieve employment. Walking the streets broke with no hope will not put them on the right path. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743/24 "2010-11-07T16:09:18Z")
And people shouldn’t think prisons don’t work. The crime rate has fallen. Prisons may not be good at rehabilitating the individuals inside them but it does prevent them from committing crimes against the public. You take a guy who robs a convenience store an average of once a month and put him in prison for five years - that’s sixty robberies that won’t happen. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743/25 "2010-11-07T16:12:55Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > Almost all the prisoners will get out of jail . Warehousing them, getting them educated by other prisoners and getting them in good physical condition is counter productive. We have to rehab them . They have to come out with more opportunities that they went in with. They need skills and an education to achieve employment. Walking the streets broke with no hope will not put them on the right path. Saying “we have to do something” isn’t a solution. Tell us what it is we have to do. As I said above, we’ve spent two hundred years trying different ways to rehabilitate prisoners and we haven’t found anything that works reliably - and that includes education and job programs. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743/26 "2010-11-07T16:39:01Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > Should prisons be primarily focused on punishment? (i.e., Should they be warehouses where people are kept for a given amount of time?) Or should the emphasis be on education/re-education/rehabilitation? The idea of prison as rehabilitation is nonsensical. By the time someone screws up badly enough to actually have the doors slammed behind him, it’s far too late to think of rehabilitation. Think instead of cages where the wild animals are kept away from the innocents. ---
**Author:** ![Redpill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/58956e/32.png) [@Redpill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Redpill)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743/27 "2010-11-07T16:43:14Z")
Trying to rehabilitate is a noble idea but unfortunately, for some people, the only thing that holds them back from committing crimes is the punishment aspect of the prison. That’s why it might be important to keep the perception of prison as a punishment. However when already in prison, they should be given the opportunity to turn a new leaf if so inclined. I think the system is balanced OK like it is. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743/28 "2010-11-07T16:46:38Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Saying “we have to do something” isn’t a solution. Tell us what it is we have to do. As I said above, we’ve spent two hundred years trying different ways to rehabilitate prisoners and we haven’t found anything that works reliably - and that includes education and job programs. **Little Nemo** , **Casdave** , what do you think of the European prison model - specifically, generally shorter terms and relatively comfortable prisons? ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743/29 "2010-11-07T20:53:48Z")
Does not work, since I am posting from the UK, this is part of the European model. I have noticed a tendency for UK politicians to make great play of going to the US to observe prisons there, and yet this is a place that incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than anywhere else in the industrialised world. If it were for me to decide, I would first look at similarly industrialised nations and find out which had the best rates of rehabilitation, if that happens to be Holland, or Norway, then thats where I would go to observe. I think that our failure is part of our ‘Little England’ values where we only ever want to speak English and its to difficult to learn anything else, anyway you Americans are most part British anyway so we can take tips from you instead of some funny little foreigners whose idea may, actually , y’know, work. I completely agree that the money needs to be spent in classrooms, in parent education and support, those who are already institutionalised are pretty near to being a lost cause and there is little that we do can help, offenders can only help themselves - we can’t do it for them. Why is it that we have to let them out anyway? Especially the repeat offenders, just who says we should? We can run a prison very cheaply of we have a large building with lockable rooms, take away all those services such as offender management, sentence plan, drug counselling and myriad others, you could literally halve the number of staff in prisons.You need only have a handful of prisons like this, they would serve as a good example to other offenders, keep doing what you are doing and you too can join them, permananently - should concententrate their minds somewhat. They can be retrained, but it would be incredibly expensive and we simply do not have a system that is capable of it, it would require frequent inspections and interventions from parole staff, which would be carried out several times a day, constant monotoring, and very swift return to prison for breaches of conditions, along with a commitment to keep this up for a long time, the rehabilitation sentence(as opposed to a straight prison term) would be a ‘breach and go back to the beginning’ type, currently, the law states once an offender has completed their term, then its all over. Offenders should be viewed in a similar vein to the addict, once an addict always an addict and the best you can do is keep it under control - enforced abstinence Keep them inside until they are too infirm to cause harm, they will not become role models for their children they are better off with an absent father than an offending parent in attendance - I see this so many times where the names are familiar because their father was inside maybe ten years ago, they will not be roaming the streets offending, they will not be the big boys of their area, they are out of circulation. That’s also one heck of a disincentive too. ---
**Author:** ![palindromemordnilap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/db5fbb/32.png) [@palindromemordnilap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/palindromemordnilap)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743/30 "2010-11-08T17:07:12Z")
One thing we haven’t tried is forcing prisoners to meet the gaze of a Gorgon. But I suppose that would just turn them into hardened criminals. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743/31 "2010-11-08T18:19:04Z")
> [@Mr.Excellent](#): > > **Little Nemo** , **Casdave** , what do you think of the European prison model - specifically, generally shorter terms and relatively comfortable prisons? I’m not really familiar enough with European prison models to offer an opinion. ---
**Author:** ![AmunRa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@AmunRa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AmunRa)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743/32 "2010-11-08T21:54:47Z")
> [@Redpill](#): > > However when already in prison, they should be given the opportunity to turn a new leaf if so inclined. I think the system is balanced OK like it is. What about the massive problems with overcrowding in the US? ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743/33 "2010-11-09T01:50:27Z")
Prison ought to keep us safe from the prisoners _and_ the prisoners safe from each other. If, while incarcerated, prisoners can or will improve themselves in ways conducive to peaceful society, they ought to be allowed (and given facilities) to do so. Punishment ought to amount to keeping you locked up, _period._ Controlling where you go, what you eat, what you wear, when you sleep and wake is proof enough that you have lost the privileges of freedom. Anything beyond that is society getting its rocks off. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743/34 "2010-11-09T02:33:11Z")
> [@casdave](#): > > Most of us would be horrified at, say, being put in the village stocks and having rotten produce thrown at them, but to the offender, this would be something of a badge of honour. > I often come across ‘boot campers’ who did their juve time in such places, they wear it like a badge, as if they were not broken down by ‘the man’ and are still just as badass and worse than they ever were - as far as they are concerned, they did their jail ‘hard time’ and they can handle it. It’s even worst than that; many career criminals started offending while in their early teens, and grew up in an institutional system. It is the only real constant they know, and returning to prison periodically is actually kind of perversely comforting. As **casdave** notes, boredom is the worst punishment. Unfortunately, an unoccupied prisoner is also a prisoner who will cause any kind of ruckus possible just to make things interesting, so it is better, from a strictly warehousing standpoint, to keep them occupied with something, be it work, exercise, or entertainment. Most prisons have significant educationally opportunities that are scarcely taken advantage of by their resident populations. This goes back to the root cause of much crime; the prisoners don’t see any advantage in education or hard work. Such activity is for the chumps they prey upon. By trying to convert a felon to a “productive citizen” you are essentially attempting to alter his entire worldview and value system. Just providing opportunities won’t change that, and it is unclear that anything really will. > [@AmunRa](#): > > What about the massive problems with overcrowding in the US? Terminate the aptly named and manifestly unwinnable “War On Drugs” and you’ll cut you’ll not only cut out the mass of drug-related convictions but a lot of the associated violent crime as well. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743/35 "2010-11-09T04:52:25Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > Prison ought to keep us safe from the prisoners _and_ the prisoners safe from each other. Sure but that goes against the idea of rehabilitation. How do you think you keep prisoners safe from each other? You restrict them. You lock them in their cells away from each other, you don’t let them eat together or go to rec areas or go to classrooms together. You lock down the prison, you cut way down on crimes - but you also cut way down on what freedoms exist in prison. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743/36 "2010-11-09T04:58:22Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > As **casdave** notes, boredom is the worst punishment. And I completely agree. Prison is more boring than you can possibly imagine. Think of a typical boring situation in your life - like being in a doctor’s waiting room, a bad one with no TV and really crappy old magazines. Now imagine you had to sit in that waiting room all by yourself for eight straight hours. Pretty bad, right? Now imagine doing that for ten years. ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743/37 "2010-11-09T22:57:45Z")
As **Little Nemo** points out the ‘Silent System’ is an effective way to drive people mad. I’ve visted [Port Arthur](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur,_Tasmania) in Tasmania. The remains of the Separate wing are pretty freaky - solitary confinement 23 hours a day with solitary exercise and a chapel set up so all each prisoner can see is the preacher. They had to build an asylum next door to cope with all the inmates who broke down. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-prisons-do/559743.md?page=1)