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Prison
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
"Most people who are in the prison system will get out, they will be somebody’s neighbor and they will have gained nothing from their time in prison except the knowledge that “it’s you or me” because that’s the way it is in our prisons. They have removed most of the educational programs from our prisons because the tax payers don’t want to throw away good money on worthless criminals. They have no counseling, nothing to help them change whatever it was that got them where they are in the first place. Is this what we really want?" "Misconceptions About Prison Life" By Jeanette Doil
The Eighth Amendment of The Bill of Rights for the Constitution of the United States: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." The very way prisons are operated today is a clear violation of this amendment.
Prison life today is the complete forfeiture of freedom for a certain period of time; sometimes the remaining days of one's life. Both violent and non-violent people are mixed together in the prison population which violates the Eighth Amendment because the potentiality for violence against non-violent offenders strongly exists. Furthermore, given the present conditions, those given life sentences without the possibility of parol would be better off if given the option of execution by the method of their choosing. But what about those with the chance of eventually leaving prison and returning to society?
One of the things strongly lacking in prison today is personal discipline; self imposed discipline. This is the discipline that makes you try harder and work more intensely then you ever thought you could. Sadly, prisoners lack both the incentive and ability to develop this themselves. Consequently, discipline needs to come from outside themselves. The best source of external discipline comes from United States Marine Corps boot-camp seargants. Prisoners need to be treated the same as new recruits when they step off the bus into the prison yard for the first time. It needs to be made clear that until they are released, the "system" will not allow them to continue in their present state of disorder. Once the prisoner accepts their new found source of discipline, they may "graduate" to learning a trade or completing an education. Various forms of counselling must also be provided in order to keep them focused on their path to rehabilitation. The right of the prisoners to peaceably assemble must be forfeited in order to prevent the formation of groups detrimental to the process. This would also prevent the smuggling of drugs into the prison as the corrupt corrections officer would no longer have a "market". The problem with prisons today is that they only serve to foster a continuation of the human condition that leads to incarceration. With all this discussion and funding of homeland security, it would seem logical to start with America's prisons as a means of improving the safety and security of every United States citizen.
The Eighth Amendment of The Bill of Rights for the Constitution of the United States: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." The very way prisons are operated today is a clear violation of this amendment.
Prison life today is the complete forfeiture of freedom for a certain period of time; sometimes the remaining days of one's life. Both violent and non-violent people are mixed together in the prison population which violates the Eighth Amendment because the potentiality for violence against non-violent offenders strongly exists. Furthermore, given the present conditions, those given life sentences without the possibility of parol would be better off if given the option of execution by the method of their choosing. But what about those with the chance of eventually leaving prison and returning to society?
One of the things strongly lacking in prison today is personal discipline; self imposed discipline. This is the discipline that makes you try harder and work more intensely then you ever thought you could. Sadly, prisoners lack both the incentive and ability to develop this themselves. Consequently, discipline needs to come from outside themselves. The best source of external discipline comes from United States Marine Corps boot-camp seargants. Prisoners need to be treated the same as new recruits when they step off the bus into the prison yard for the first time. It needs to be made clear that until they are released, the "system" will not allow them to continue in their present state of disorder. Once the prisoner accepts their new found source of discipline, they may "graduate" to learning a trade or completing an education. Various forms of counselling must also be provided in order to keep them focused on their path to rehabilitation. The right of the prisoners to peaceably assemble must be forfeited in order to prevent the formation of groups detrimental to the process. This would also prevent the smuggling of drugs into the prison as the corrupt corrections officer would no longer have a "market". The problem with prisons today is that they only serve to foster a continuation of the human condition that leads to incarceration. With all this discussion and funding of homeland security, it would seem logical to start with America's prisons as a means of improving the safety and security of every United States citizen.
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Comments
A sad indictment indeed.
For example, you only get soap, no toothbrush or toothpaste, no comb, no shampoo, none of that. Anything above very cheap soap and you have to pay for it, which obviously some of them cant.
Also the amount of time you just get by yourself with really nothing to do is crazy. If the prison is on lock-down, which happens every now and then he virtualy never goes outside the cell and doesnt get anything new to read or have a TV. You try filling 24 hours a day in a small cell with a book you've already read 10 times.
and this is from your personal experience?
now the jails give you telly and all sorts of activities. wrong in my book. when your basicaly in a dungeon you have a lot of time to reflect ...you don't go back in a hurry. with telly and sports it's no big challenge going back.
by the way was there a point to this thread?
Whether or not society wishes to treat its convicts as humans and with a degree of respect is really an aside. They have to be released at some point and it is better to try and rehabilitate them rather than just treating them like dogs.
guys who are in and out of the place for six months a year maybe two ...are the ones who are overcroding the place. a lot of them cannot read and write. a lot of them are not interesting in anything at all. how do you rehabilitate these people?
do you know the costs involved?
rehabilitation requires an awful lot of very expensive experts and proffesionals. teachers, psycologists and psyciatrists. therapists from many differing forms of therapy. councilors etc. the cost is way to prohibitive. mostly pointless as well.
Maybe Im being naive, but Im of the opinion that ambition is the best deterrent for criminals, in the same way ambition is the best deterrent for young mothers.
You say these people cannot read and write- they therefore have no hope of getting work, of doing well for themselves, so they might as well resort to low-level crime because a spell in the clanger is of no deterrence value. They wont lose anything by being inside for a few years.
Maybe for the people already in the system it is too late, but the sooner we sort out the education system in this country the better for everyone. Icve said it time and time again, private schools should be abolished for the simple fact that it might focus the minds of the elite if they have to send THEIR kids to a shitty comprehensive in Clapham or somewhere.
hope is another good thing to instill.
i don't know how true this is but was told quite a few years back that in italy, if your doing more than a year you get to work making boots and shoes etc ...you can earn like fiftry quid a week of which you are alowed only a tenner. the rest is paid to you on release ...meaning you have a few quid in your pocket to find somewhere to live etc. you don't have excuse or reason to go thieving straight away.
in the uk you get one weeks social security on release but cannot claim any benefits for two weeks. many men leave jail with 30/40 quid with no where to live ...no family ...freinds have moved on ...alone, homeless, skint, pissed off ...but armed with an ever growing criminal know how. recipie for trouble me thinks.
In the long-term its a financial argument because it must be cheaper to put the money in and make sure that they dont come back to prison.
Yeah, I mean to improve school dinners rather than make prison meals worse.
Actually I would disagree with you on that last point, there's nothing wrong with having private schools. Abolishing them would be like banning cars to improve the bus service.
This country has to be educated that a decent state system can be provided if we had the will to provide it. Take away the bureaucracy and political point-scoring and invest. Yes it would cost but like you say sorting out the education system, it would have an affect on prison numbers and reduce the rising costs of prisons.