Well, Qadgop knows better about what goes on in a prison, so I’ll defer to his expertise. That being said, I’m still uneasy with the idea of it. And yes, there’s the punishment aspect of it. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to reform prisoners, but it’s not supposed to be a vacation either.
One would think you’d be a fan.
Oh, believe me. It’s no vacation.
Gods no…it’s definitely no vacation. We support the various detention centers in the county and state, and I hate going there even just to do basic network maintenance or troubleshoot network or systems issues. To paraphrase from The Matrix, it’s the smell. But it’s not just the physical smell…it’s almost an emotional level thing.
Giving prisoners access to porn isn’t going to make life there a vacation, or enjoyable. More like a small safety valve on a huge boiling pot. 
Precisely. It’ll make a bad situation slightly better.
We give them the ideas? You seem to be under the impression that someone is calling for the prison to provide the porn, which seems a ridiculous idea on the face of it. But the actual topic under discussion here is porn that the inmates gain through other ways, such as bringing it in with them, or having it brought in by friends on the outside. In which case, these are ideas about sex that they’d be getting anyway, in or out of prison.
Just pictures? I would have thought that gang propaganda would be seen as more dangerous than just illustrations.
Isn’t one of the remedial purposes of incarceration to teach prisoners that the explanation “Well, I had to jack off in front of you, you wouldn’t let me have pornography!” is unavailing?
People are in prison, by and large, because they cannot control their impulses (for drugs, for cash, for sexual outlets, for vengeance of slights) and conform to standards of legal behavior.
Seen in this light, I’m not sure we should be particularly impressed by the argument that this will make their prison lives more delightful. They should be learning how to master frustration.
That’s rubbish.
If access to porn means fewer assaults and rapes, it is a good thing to do. That it marginally makes their lives slightly better isn’t a bug.
This kind of thinking is what leads to abstinence only education.
For creative reasons. So you can make your own.
Which most people do by masturbating to porn. Relieving themselves with porn is “conforming to the standards of legal behavior”.
Will it?
Maybe they would actually get more enjoyment out of raping and assaulting other prisoners and acting out sexually in front of female guards, but would use the porn because it was easier and more immediate.
Like how you might get more enjoyment from spending hours cooking a nice meal, but would resort to a fast food cheeseburger if you had one in front of you.
No, in fact, it is a very bad thing to teach them that denying them access to pornography in any way legitimates assaults or rapes. The world doesn’t always meet our expectations, and there are limits on what kinds of self-help we can avail ourselves of when that happens.
Going to prison means saying adios to porn. If this is not a trade-off one wants to make, then one needs to learn how to tolerate frustration and avoid activities that will send one to the pokey.
I am not sure how you think this pertains to abstinence-only education. I surmise it is a red herring you’ve concocted to cover up the fact that you haven’t got an argument. In any event, even sex-positive education doesn’t teach, “Have sex whenever you and however you want. Worry about consequences later,” instead it teaches people “Sex can be enjoyable, and it’s not bad to do. But there are emotional and physical health considerations that should guide you in choosing what, when, how, and with whom you have sex. Let’s talk about those.” So, in short, it’s all about being forward-thinking and making good, considered choices.
Cite?
Based on your claim then you should be able to produce evidence that rape was far more common in Warsaw Pact countries, where porn was illegal than Western European countries where it was legal.
Please do so.
Thanks.
As a behavior modification program, prisons fail catastrophically. Yes, we should be teaching them all the cardinal virtues, educating them in the basics of reading and ciphering, teaching them skills to make them employable, filling them with moral imperatives to get them to feel real remorse and make amends to their victims, educate them about firearm safety, seatbelt and helmet laws, weight loss, smoking cessation, and responsible alcohol consumption. (All the aforementioned points have been, or are presently mandated by law or policy as things the inmates need to be taught while incarcerated.)
But let’s get real. The system all too often is overwhelmed, overcrowded, understaffed, underfunded, held up to public ridicule by elected officials for actually providing any sort of rehab, and the basic imperative is harm reduction, and trying to return them to society less likely to re-offend than when they came in.
So it’s not real cost-effective to try to police the porn and confiscate it. We save that effort for catching the drugs and syringes and cell phones and weapons smuggled in. You know, the stuff that can actually harm staff and other inmates.
Also, keep in mind that inmates are not sent to prison to be punished, they are sent to prison as punishment.
All admirable goals to be sure, but I have here advocated for teaching them “How to handle your frustration in ways that don’t lead you to violate whatever disciplinary regulations apply to you.” For some reason, I feel that if you find yourself jailed, this is an especially pertinent life lesson to have imparted. More so than reading, writing, and arithmetic, or even vocational training. These latter would make post-manumission life easier; but learning how to follow the law even when you might not want to is especially vital. (And since most inmates will like to avoid returning to jail, these are techniques that they—or the better angels of their nature, at least—want to learn too.)
My kudos to you for trying to make my position appear ridiculous by larding it with worthwhile, but still secondary, embellishments.
Written gang material either isn’t allowed but it’s pictures that are the main issue (which, when you think about it, is also true of porn). Not only are gang related pictures more prevalent, they’re also a problem because prisoners display these pictures as a mean of displaying their gang allegiance.
And like I said, they get creative. If you walked by and saw a prisoner had this ad taped to his wall, would you recognize that he might be telling people he was a gang member?
No, you haven’t. What you’ve done is advocate for frustrating them further, and preventing them from dealing with it. Porn is one of the most common means of handling sexual frustration.
Aren’t gang affiliations pretty well known amongst prisoners?
We work on suppressing it (which admittedly can sometimes be compared to pushing back the tide). If you tolerate public gang signs, they get used as intimidation. Gang members will publicly display their affiliation as a group to show how many of them there are. Other gangs will then display their numbers. Unaffiliated people will feel pressured into supporting some gang. Next you’ve got challenges and fights. So we follow the Barney Fife principle and try to nip it in the bud.