Re: OT - I may be in the minority
- From: "Eliyahu" <lrooff@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 5 May 2006 06:54:43 -0700
Karen C. wrote:
Eliyahu wrote:The theory of general deterrence has also been throughly discredited.
You're overlooking the fact that it's been decided by the courts and
legislatures throughout the land that people are sent to prison _as_
punishment, not _for_ punishment.
No, I'm not overlooking that fact; I just don't think they have
made prison to be enough of a deterrent.
We are already the only western nation whose jails and prisons don't
meet the UN standards for prisons, one of only a few democracies to
retain the death penalty, we have the highest per-capita rate of
incarceration, the largest percentage of our general population under
the control of courts and departments of correction, and it hasn't
helped much at all. When the entire Arkansas prison system was found to
be unconstitutional by federal courts a couple decades ago, they used
everything from leather straps for beatings to electrical generators to
torture misbehaving prisoners. The court found it to be "a dark and
alien world, completely divorced from the free world" and that it still
had the highest recidivism rate in the country.
Murderers have the lowest recidivism rate of all crimes. It's
Most of them will eventually be returning to the community. If they've
I think the crime should fit the punishment. Obviously, it
doesn't these days. If you're a hard-core murderer or rapist, I
just don't think you should be allowed to return to the
community. Period.
generally a "once in a lifetime" thing brought on by the circumstances
of the crime and isn't likely to be repeated. And the vast majority of
our prisoners aren't in there for rape or murder. They're in prison for
drug possession, thefts, domestic assaults and similar stuff.
And the prisons really don't need the return business. We've already got the highest per
capita rate of imprisonment in the world.>
IMO, we would have more room if we got tougher on hard-core
murderers and rapists and carried through on the death penalty
for some of the thousands we have sitting on death row.
IT wouldn't make much room. The bulk of our two million prisoners in
the US are there for relatively minor stuff, and they're already
serving sentences that are two to eight times as long as those imposed
by other western democracies. There's a reason that we're currently
spending far more on prisons than we are on education in the US, and
it's because we think that we'll be safe if we can only lock up enough
people.
BTW, what's a "hard-core murderer"? You could put all the incarcerated
serial killers into a fairly small room without them being crowded.
When you work with prisoners on a regular basis as I have, you discover
that the demonized drooling psychopath, eager to commit more violent
crimes, is mostly a creation of the entertainment industry. The
average prisoner isn't much different than the average person on the
outside other than a few bad decisions in his past.
Eliyahu
.
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