What should prison be like?

[naut]

The problem with prisons is what it does to people who are only scentenced for a period of months to a few years. They end up coming back into society sodomized, brutal and in most cases severely mentally damaged.

Originally Posted by Kagemusha
I think Prisons should be work oriented.Hard labour from morning to evening.Inmates should get deacent food and deacent sleep.But other then that.Work,Work and more work.

Its not a bad idea, keep them locked in seperate cells, then take the out to eat and work. It would certainly stop sodomization, and the disciplined environment is a form of rehabilitation.

[scooter_the_shooter]

Hmm; depending on the crime I think a few deserve to be put with bubba But most should be kept safe from bubba and corrupt guards but....rapist murderers etc


I think that prison should such a terrible place that you never want to go back. But some kid who took daddy's car for a joy ride should not need to be raped.

[Ice]

I think that prison should such a terrible place that you never want to go back. But some kid who took daddy's car for a joy ride should not need to be raped.

No one should have to be raped. Most prisons are awful places. A drastic change is needed.

[KafirChobee]

A society gets what it sows. If a society opts for harsh conditions to punish law breakers, and casts them together (regardless of their level of commitment to crime, or degree of inhumanity to man in a committed act, or even their degree of guilt in an incident) then they ought not to expect explemplerary citizens to return from hell and act like angels.

What the past has shown is that first time prisoners given maximum sentances tend to return to society embittered, and more often re-enforced that their action against society was a correct judgement in the first place - it will also be reenforced by those there (whether they agree or not - they got a new convert). Since, they were being held back by forces in the society that forced them to commit the crime (for survival) in the first place...addon the treatment of our prison system ... and voila ... a perfect criminal.

Today, we have a 67% recidivism rate - first year of release; 97% overall (97% will return to the penal system by year 3 of their release). We have improved exactly 0% overall in 30 years. Difference is today, it costs us $30-35,000 per prisoner to keep them enturned. We could be sending all these people to Harvard or Yale - then we just get white collar crime (like Cheney and Rumsfeld).

Point is, lumping crime and criminals together is unproductive and a waste of resources. Certainly there are career criminals, but they just get better at their craft by our inability to catagorize and clarrify our penal system. Tossing first time offenders into the same pens as habituals is like sending a "bad" dog to play with other bad dogs - he learns nothing and comes away worse than he was before.

Education is the only key. Enforce it on them, by taking time off their sentance or by extending it if they do not comply.

As for the "date rape" in prison - open up the laws to allow congical (ms) visits, regardless of marital status. And, take the offenders to a real hole - some prison that they can all reside and b-f one another in.

Real enforcement of social law does not mean persecuting those that will see the light of society again, but reconditioning them to the laws of the society so that they can have the opportunity to be a part of it. To simply ask for punishment against those that break the law (regardless of the act, say possession of an ounce of MJ, versus holding up a liquor store, bank etc - and the 3 strikes your out laws really means kill everyone if you have 2 strikes) is self defeating in any attempt to curtail crime.

Some like to point out that crime is down ..... for this, that, or another thing - meaning that our penal system must be working. Right. Only, we have 1% of our populace in it .... 3.5 million people. How is that working? And, it is growing daily.

Thing is, a society gets what it sows.